Curriculum and Instruction Commons^™

Boys, Books, And Boredom: A Case Of Three High School Boys And Their Encounters With Literacy, Loukia K. Sarroub, Todd Pernicek

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

We examine the literacy gender gap through the documented experiences of three representative high schools boys and their teacher—how they view themselves as students, their dispositions toward schooling and education, and their engagement with literacy— as a way to further understand how literacy teachers can better work with them. We offer a case study analysis of the boys’ struggles with academic reading in high school reading classes aimed at addressing the needs of young people who read far below grade level in school. We highlight the multifaceted, complex nature of “struggle” or “reluctance” toward academic reading and argue that no …

College Dreams À La Mexicana . . . Agency And Strategy Among American-Mexican Transnational Students, Nolvia A. Cortez Román, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Drawing from in-depth interviews with university-level transnational students in Mexico, we highlight these students’ resistance and agency in the face of US legal and educational policies that have marginalized them and other undocumented students. We also illustrate pitfalls and possibilities that students encounter in a Mexican system that has not anticipated their presence. The interviewed students viewed return migration for higher education in Mexico as a strategy that could allow them to access/develop their imagined identities as college-educated professionals and one day, legalized citizens of the United States. At the time they made their decisions, before Deferred Action for Childhood …

Children, Mathematics, And Videotape: Using Multimodal Analysis To Bring Bodies Into Early Childhood Assessment Interviews, Amy Noelle Parks, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Despite the increased use of video for data collection, most research using assessment interviews in early childhood education relies solely upon the analysis of linguistic data, ignoring children’s bodies. This trend is particularly troubling in studies of marginalized children because transcripts limited to language can make it difficult to analyze embodied power relations between majority researchers and minority children. This article responds to this problem by outlining a theoretical position on power and bodies, describing multimodal analysis strategies, and using these strategies to analyze the subject positions available during a mathematical assessment interview for three African American preschool child-participants and …

Preparation For Practice: Elementary Preservice Teachers Learning And Using Scientific Classroom Discourse Community Instructional Strategies, Elizabeth Lewis, Oxana Dema, Dena Harshbarger

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Despite historical national efforts to improve elementary science education, science instruction continues to be marginalized, varying by state. This study was designed to address the ongoing challenge of educating elementary preservice teachers (PSTs) to teach science. Elementary PSTs are one of the science education community's major links to schools and science education reform. However, they often lack a strong background in science, knowledge of effective science teaching strategies, and consequently have low confidence and self-efficacy. This investigation explored the initial learning of elementary PSTs using an interdisciplinary model of a scientific classroom discourse community during a science methods course. Findings …

Reflections On Effective Writing Instruction The Value Of Expectations, Engagement, Feedback, Data, And Sociocultural Instructional Practices, Kara Mitchell Viesca, Kim Hutchison

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This reflection on effective writing practice is the result of a university–school partnership focused on collaboratively investigating the work of a successful 5th grade-writing teacher. The co-authors collectively present the work of Mrs. Hutchison, a veteran teacher who worked in a predominately low-income school with a high percentage of students labeled English language learners. Mrs. Hutchison’s class was a space where each student was both a learner and a teacher and most students developed a great interest and love of writing. This reflective piece presents data documenting Mrs. Hutchison’s success as well as a collaborative reflection on her work intended …

A Pragmatist Perspective On Building Intercultural Communicative Competency: From Theory To Classroom Practice, Aleidine J. Moeller, Sarah R. Faltin Osborn

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article analyzes and synthesizes the major theoretical frameworks for building intercultural communicative competency (ICC) within the domain of the foreign language classroom. Researchers used a pragmatist orientation as a venue for the translation of theoretical models into usable, accessible guidelines for classroom teachers in order to provide a deeper understanding and clarity of ICC and its implementation in the language classroom

A Study On The Elementary School Teachers’ Awareness Of Students’ Alternative Conceptions About Change Of States And Dissolution, Chanho Yang, Taehee Noh, Lawrence C. Scharmann, Sukjin Kang

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Knowledge about students’ conceptions is one of the requisite components of pedagogical content knowledge. A keen awareness of students’ alternative conceptions provides teachers with information about prospective difficulties students may incur as they make attempts to learn more accurate scientific representations of critical concepts. In this study, we investigated elementary school teachers’ understanding of their students’ alternative conceptions about change of states and dissolution. The subjects were 152 elementary school teachers and 529 sixth graders in Korea. A conceptions test and the test of the understanding about students’ conceptions were administered in order to examine students’ alternative conceptions and the …

Narrative Understandings Of A School Policy: Intersecting Student, Teacher, Parent And Administrator Perspectives, Elaine Chan, Vicki Ross

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this article, we examine one school’s experience with policy, as a means of shedding light on the intersection of factors contributing to challenges of implementing policies to support the academic achievement and social adaptation of immigrant and minority students in their school context. We begin with the presentation of a ‘big fight’ between two students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and consider multiple perspectives of how the disagreement was addressed by teachers and administrators, to offer insight into how issues of race and policy might have been understood by members of the school community. We use a narrative …

Equitable Written Assessments For English Language Learners: How Scaffolding Helps, Marcelle A. Siegel, Deepika Menon, Somnath Sinha, Nattida Promyod, Cathy Wissehr, Kristy L. Halvorson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This study investigated the effects of the use of scaffolds in written classroom assessments through the voices of both native English speakers and English language learners from two middle schools. Students responded to assessment tasks in writing, by speaking aloud using think aloud protocols, and by reflecting in a post-assessment interview. The classroom assessment tasks were designed to engage students in scientific sense making and multifaceted language use, as recommended by the Next Generation Science Standards. Data analyses showed that both groups benefited from the use of scaffolds. The findings revealed specific ways that modifications were supportive in helping students …

The Mathematical Nature Of Reasoning-And-Proving Opportunities In Geometry Textbooks, Samuel Otten, Nicholas J. Gilbertson, Lorraine Males, D. Lee Clark

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

International calls have been made for reasoning-and-proving to permeate school mathematics. It is important that efforts to heed this call are grounded in an understanding of the opportunities to reason- and-prove that already exist, especially in secondary-level geometry where reasoning-and-proving opportunities are prevalent but not thoroughly studied. This analysis of six secondary-level geometry textbooks, like studies of other textbooks, characterizes the justifications given in the exposition and the reasoning-and-proving activities expected of students in the exercises. Furthermore, this study considers whether the mathematical statements included in the reasoning-and-proving opportunities are general or particular in nature. Findings include the fact that …

“Women Made It A Home”: Representations Of Women In Social Studies, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article explores recently published P–12 social studies lesson plans that include women to examine how attending to women is “getting done” in the field and how the lessons represent women and women’s experiences. Using discourse analysis methodologies, the author demonstrates that women have been included as topics in ways that do not work toward disrupting problematic discourses about gender norms. Through their avoidance of issues of power and patriarchy, most of the lessons fall short of addressing gender inequity—in the past or the present—in a significant way. More critical attention to women and gender in lessons, as well as …

Spoken Spanish Language Development At The High School Level: A Mixed-Methods Study, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Janine Theiler

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Communicative approaches to teaching language have emphasized the centrality of oral proficiency in the language acquisition process, but research investigating oral proficiency has been surprisingly limited, yielding an incomplete understanding of spoken language development. This study investigated the development of spoken language at the high school level over five consecutive years, involving more than 1,500 students representing 23 school districts. Quantitative Standards-Based Measure of Proficiency speaking scores and student-produced qualitative spoken samples (n > 6,000 samples) contributed to an understanding of the development of spoken language. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) revealed a consistent growth trajectory of spoken language development, and results …

The Effect Of Morphological Strategies Training For English Language Learners, Q. Deng, G. Trainin

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Native speakers have a vocabulary size of about 50,000 when they enter college, but English as a second language learners (ELLs) have a size between 3500 and 4500 word families to take TOEFL exam (Chujo & Oghigian, 2009). It is not difficult to conclude that, when students enter college, the vocabulary size of native speakers is about 12 times of that for ELLs. Of the recently developed Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000), more than 82% of the entries are of Greek or Latin origin, indicating that the knowledge of morphemic structures, such as prefixes, suffixes, and word stems, positively affects …

The Nuts And Bolts Of Running A Graduate Student-Led Science Outreach Program, Matthew Mccune, Deepika Menon, Kevin Tarwater, Christopher Owens

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Abstract submitted for the PSF13 meeting of the American Physical Society, October 12, 2013 about the nuts and bolts of running a graduate student-led science outreach program.

Barriers To Developing Physics Faculty Knowledge For Teaching: Identifying Gaps Through Critical Review Of The Literature, Deepika Menon

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Abstract submitted for the PSF13 Meeting of the American Physical Society, October 11, 2013 on barriers to developing physics faculty knowledge for teaching, identifying gaps through a critical review of the literature.

The Gender Trap: Parents And The Pitfalls Of Raising Boys And Girls, Mardi Schmeichel

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Book review

The book The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls is an example of the kind of nuanced research that works toward unraveling the complexities of gender as expressed in individual lives as well as larger societal patterns that contribute to problematic assumptions about who girls and boys and women and men must be. Sociologist Emily Kane focuses specifically on the “gender trap” in parenting, which she defines as “a set of expectations and structures that inhibit social change and stall many parents’ best intentions for loosening the limits that gender can impose on …

Understanding The Language Of The Occupy Movement: A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis, Theresa Catalano, John W. Creswell

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In the expanding area of narrative inquiry, researchers often battle with the decision of how to analyze/interpret data. The aim of this article is to propose the use of cognitive linguistics as a tool in narrative analysis using as a case illustration interviews conducted in October/November 2011 with participants in the Occupy movement (Occupy). Results expose important metaphors/metonymies that reveal much about the perception of the movement by its inceptors. Not only did the analysis present the movement as a war and a force against government corporations, oppression, and inequality, but it was also seen as a strong structure and …

Associations Between Teacher Emotional Support And Depressive Symptoms In Australian Adolescents: A 5-Year Longitudinal Study, Patrick Pössel, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Michael G. Sawyer, Susan H. Spence, Annie C. Bjerg

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Approximately 1/5 of adolescents develop depressive symptoms. Given that youths spend a good deal of their lives at school, it seems plausible that supportive relationships with teachers could benefit their emotional well-being. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the association between emotionally supportive teacher relationships and depression in adolescence. The so-called principle-effect and stress-buffer models could explain relationships between teacher emotional support and depressive symptoms, yet no study has used both models to test bidirectional relationships between teacher support and depressive symptoms in students separately by sex. Four-thousand three-hundred forty-one students (boys: n = 2,063; girls: n …

Professional Journals As A Source Of Information About Teaching Nature Of Science: An Examination Of Articles Published In The Journal Of College Science Teaching, 1996-2012, Deepika Menon, Somnath Sinha

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Recent efforts to reform science education have strongly emphasized the understanding of the nature of science (NOS) as important to achieving broader scientific literacy. Despite the realization that students‘ understanding of NOS is important, there is a gap between research and practice. In order to teach NOS effectively in pre-college or college classrooms, teachers need appropriate activities, examples, and models of instruction that can contribute towards the development of their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for teaching NOS. One widespread and readily-available source teachers may consult to find appropriate models of teaching practice and example activities is professional journals. The present …

Organization Of Schooling In Three Countries, Edmund T. Hamann, Saloshna Vandeyar, Juan Sanchez Garcia

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

It has been more than 30 years since Britan and Cohen (1980) assembled a number of leading anthropologists in a joint call for an anthropology of bureaucracies. Their call was a refinement and rearticulation of a more enduring concern in anthropology, illustrated in particular in the work of South Africa-born, British anthropologist Meyer Fortes (1938) who was interested in what McDermott and Raley (2011: 46) have summarized as "the acquisition of kinds of people by social structure."

One starting point for an anthropology of organizations that sees schools as a particular kind of organization meriting direct scrutiny is the anthropology …

Acknowledging The Religious Beliefs Students Bring Into The Science Classroom: Using The Bounded Nature Of Science, Sherry A. Southerland, Lawrence C. Scharmann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Scientific knowledge often appears to contradict many students’ religious beliefs. Indeed, the assumptions of science appear contradictory to the metaphysical claims of many religions. This conflict is most evident in discussions of biological evolution. Teachers, in attempts to limit the controversy, often avoid this topic or teach it superficially. Recently, there has been a political effort to teach to the controversy—which some see as a way of introducing religious explanations for biological diversity into science classrooms. Many science educators reject this approach, insisting that teachers limit classroom discussions to science alone. This science only approach leaves the negotiation of alternative …

Where Is Earth Science? Mining For Opportunities In Chemistry, Physics, And Biology, Julie Thomas, Toni Ivey, Jim Puckette

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The Earth sciences are newly marginalized in K–12 classrooms. With few high schools offering Earth science courses, students’ exposure to the Earth sciences relies on the teacher’s ability to incorporate Earth science material into a biology, chemistry, or physics course. “G.E.T. (Geoscience Experiences for Teachers) in the Field” is an exploratory program funded by the National Science Foundation aimed to increase teachers’ geoscience interest and content knowledge. Participant teachers (n = 7) included non–Earth science teachers from underrepresented groups and/or high schools with a high percentage of students from underrepresented groups. A variety of quantitative and qualitative measures assessed …

Researching Pds Initiatives To Promote Social Justice Across The Educational System, Gail Shroyer, Amanda Morales, Sally Yahnke, Lisa A. Bietau

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The examples and data shared in this chapter provide evidence that our comprehensive mission to understand and impact issues of social justice and equity within education is being achieved as the PDS Partnership continues to improve K-16 teaching and learning and enhance the teaching profession across all levels of education. The major implication of our findings is that systemic reform is achievable and the outcomes can be exceptionally rewarding. Of course, such initiatives require time, continuous effort, resources, broad-based participation of all stakeholders, and a sense of need for change. Developing human capital across the educational continuum requires a commitment …

Curricular Treatments Of Length Measurement In The United States: Do They Address Known Learning Challenges?, John P. Smith Iii, Lorraine Males, Leslie C. Dietiker, Kosze Lee, Aaron Mosier

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Extensive research has shown that elementary students struggle to learn the basic principles of length measurement. However, where patterns of errors have been documented, the origins of students’ difficulties have not been identified. This study investigated the hypothesis that written elementary mathematics curricula contribute to the problem of learning length measurement. We analyzed all instances of length measurement in three mathematics curricula (grades K–3) and found a shared focus on procedures. Attention to conceptual principles was limited overall and particularly for central ideas; conceptual principles were often presented after students were asked to use procedures that depended on them; and …

Preparing To Teach: Redeeming The Potentialities Of The Present Through “Conversations Of Practice”, Andrew Ek, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

A prospective teacher and a teacher educator enter into a yearlong conversation seeking greater curricular physicality and materiality within its enactment. Dewey’s (1938) temporal educative relation of teaching and learning as an ever-present process is helpful, asking both parties to dwell mindfully at the intersections of teaching/learning situations and interactions. Attention turns to the lived curricular features and consequences of preparing teachers to teach as an ever-present process. The role and place of self-other negotiation is illuminated within curricular enactment, giving expression to teaching/learning as an ever-present process. Pedagogical significances are redeemed through greater teaching mindfulness of the temporality at …

Understanding American Mexican Children, Víctor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In 1997, when we first met while independently conducting field work in Whitfield County, Georgia, and its county seat, Dalton, we heard from local principals and teachers that Latino students sometimes "disappeared" from the schools. Most of these who disappeared were immigrant students from Mexico and other Central American countries, students who had arrived suddenly in local schools while accompanying their parents who found jobs in the carpet and poultry mills of the area (Hamann, 2003; Hernández-León & Zúñiga, 2000; Zúñiga & Hernández-León, 2009). The "disappearances" led one of us (Hamann, 2001) to develop a concept—the sojourner student—and draw from …

The Introduction Of Proof In Secondary Geometry Textbooks, Samuel Otten, Lorraine Males, Nicholas J. Gilbertson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Explicit reasoning-and-proving opportunities in the United States are often relegated to a single secondary geometry course. This study analyzed the reasoning-and-proving opportunities in six U.S. geometry textbooks, giving particular attention to the chapter that introduced proof. Analysis focused on the types of reasoning-and-proving activities expected of students and the type of mathematical statement around which the reasoning-and-proving took place, be it general or particular. Results include the fact that reasoning-and-proving opportunities in student exercises were predominantly of the particular type, whereas textbook exposition most commonly had general statements. Within the chapters introducing proof, opportunities for students to develop proofs were …

Interrupting The Professional Schism That Allows Less Successful Educational Practices With Ells To Persist, Edmund T. Hamann, Jenelle Reeves

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Different worldviews, different histories of induction into teaching, presumed differences in responsibilities, and different emphases in pre-service and in-service preparation have all long contributed to enduring schisms that keep general education (or mainstream) teachers and English language support faculty from coordinating and finding common cause in their efforts. This division has been at the cost of impeding many English language learners’ (ELLs) academic success. So, given that ELLs consecutively or concurrently negotiate these too-often separate schooling subworlds, it is imperative to overcome historical divisions and to conceptualize all teachers as needing (a) to be willing to see ELLs as part …

Voicing A Mindful Pedagogy: A Teacher-Artist In Action, Amanda Morales, Jory Samkoff

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Historically, educators and philosophers have struggled with defining the role and the value of formal curriculum and its impact on classroom praxis. As the current accountability movement dominates discussions in education, educators are pressured to implement increasingly standardized curricula. The authors of this work consider these tensions, situated first within contrasting theories on teaching and learning. They then explore the concept of phronesis through an interpretive biography of one teacher-artist, Frieda, whose praxis also demonstrates the aesthetic and artistic side of the teaching-learning process. This ninety-year-old teacher-artist‘s experiences with implementing her curriculums suggest that it is always possible to implement …

The Development Of A Model Of Culturally Responsive Science And Mathematics Teaching, Cecilia M. Hernandez, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This qualitative theoretical study was conducted in response to the current need for an inclusive and comprehensive model to guide the preparation and assessment of teacher candidates for culturally responsive teaching. The process of developing a model of culturally responsive teaching involved three steps: a comprehensive review of the literature; a synthesis of the literature into thematic categories to capture the dispositions and behaviors of culturally responsive teaching; and the piloting of these thematic categories with teacher candidates to validate the usefulness of the categories and to generate specific exemplars of behavior to represent each category. The model of culturally …