Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Inclusive Education For Preschool-12th Grade Students With Low Incidence Disabilities: A Case Study Of State Leaders’ Perceptions, Charles Kemp

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this holistic single-case study was to examine the state leaders’ perceptions of the readiness for public schools to implement inclusive education for students with low incidence disabilities. The adult learning theory (Knowles, 1990), the sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986), and the implementation science framework (Blasé, Van Dyke, Fixsen, Duda, Horner, & Sugai, 2009) provided the theoretical framework for this study. The study, set in a Midwestern state, sought to understand from state-level leaders’ perspectives the readiness for and the roadblocks to implementation of inclusive education for students with low incidence disabilities. The data for this study was …

The Peter London Papers, Aaron Darisaw

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Art Therapy In Educational Settings: A Confluence Of Practices, Nicole M. Gnezda Ph.D.

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Art educators solicit a range of images from students. Art therapists help clients respond to the images they create in ways that promote self-understanding and personal growth. This article describes two settings where art therapy perspectives have been integrated with art education practices in order to help students identify underlying issues impacting their education and well-being. As a result of information that arises in art therapy oriented art education programs, students can be offered guidance and directed to interventions that help them grow past their pain and self-defeating behaviors.

Socially Engaged Art Education Beyond The Classroom: Napping, Dreaming And Art Making, Barbara Bickel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Article and video offer a socially engaged art project as an example of dynamic lived curriculum. Through what the Gestare Art Collective call a Nap-In students , faculty and the community encounter and engage the unusual experience of communal napping, social dreaming and art making.

Of Camera And Community, Jodi Patterson

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Shared insights regarding a socially mediated art practice as "Land Ambassador." Artist utilizes landscape photography and her nomadic travel experiences as an opportunity to educate her "friends" on global climate change.

Art Education In My Backyard: Creative Placemaking On An Urban Farm, Jodi Kushins

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

An art educator describes how she used her knowledge and experience of artistic and educational initiatives that forefront collective activity in real world settings to transform her backyard into an urban farm with the help of friends and neighbors. She combines an autoethnographic account of her experiences, including original photographs, with research on conceptual artists, participatory culture, and creative placemaking to position her work as participatory environmental art education. The paper is organized around the major steps one undertakes in planting a garden – siting, amending, seeding, tending, and harvesting - to draw parallels between the processes of maintaining a …

Other-Than-Ego Consciousness: Approaching The “Spiritual” In Secular Art Education, Nico Roenpagel

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Alternative worldviews bring forth alternative visions of education. This article sheds light on one contemporary approach to a spiritual worldview and its implications for secular art education. It proposes that high school visual art is a particularly conducive environment to engaging teenagers with existential and spiritual questions. An approach to spirituality grounded in a worldview of “profound interconnectedness” and “other-than-ego consciousness,” rather than religious systems, offers a timely basis for renegotiating the spiritual in secular art education settings. Through five concepts, the article bridges broader discussions on spirituality with concrete learning and teaching in the art classroom. For example, it …

Inverse Inclusion: A Model For Preservice Art Teacher Training, Angela M. La Porte

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

A university community-based intercession course offers preservice art teachers a unique opportunity to experience inverse inclusion in an art class for special needs adults. Inverse inclusion allows preservice teachers to become students working side-by-side with an equal or greater number of special needs learners, and also places them in occasional roles as teacher, teacher’s assistant, and videographer. Their observations and interactions within these roles provide preservice teachers with perceptive insights and perspectives about teaching, and nurture a better understanding of special needs students’ personal interests and abilities. Applying, reflecting upon, and adapting open-ended art curriculum theory and practice from multiple …

Celebrating Life, Denouncing Human Violence, Peter London

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Essay enticingly brings to our view the painter Seymour Segal, as artist who admits the viewer unabashedly into the "discomfort, the danger ... of the protagonist or event taking place."

Misunderstandings And Consequences Of Labeling Artists As Self-Taught, Kristin Congdon

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

I have championed artists who have been invisible and underrepresented for decades. Sometimes these artists have been labeled by race or ethnicity and many of them have fallen into the categories of folk and self-taught. When writing about artists who have fallen into one of these categories, I have often tried to avoid labeling them, hoping to have them viewed simply (and complexly) as artists worthy of (high) art consideration. However, I have found that sometimes labeling has been necessary and even useful. Labeling helps a writer, curator, scholar, educator, or arts facilitator focus on a particular cultural group, worldview, …

Poems For Artizein, Sally A. Gradle

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This is a collection of seven poems all of which have to do with being a teacher or an observer of artistic growth in children, one's self, or the differently abled. I view the teaching of art as something of a spiritual quest for greater understanding of the self and the world. I hope to have conveyed a bit of the essence of what it means to unfold in this regard.

Letter From The Editors, Artizein Arts & Teaching Journal

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Letter from the editors: Peter London, Sally Gradle, Barbara Bickel and Jodi Patterson

Front Matter Of Artizein

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Artizein Cover Volume 1/ Issue 1, Artizein Arts & Teaching Journal

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Journal View: Artizein: Arts & Teaching Journal

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

No abstract provided.

Necessary But Not Sufficient: Deweyan Dialogue And The Demands Of Critical Citizenship. A Book Review Of The Political Classroom: Evidence And Ethics In Democratic Education, Joseph C. Wegwert

Democracy & Education

This is a book review of The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education, by Hess and McAvoy.

"How To Be Nice And Get What You Want": Structural Referents Of "Self" And "Other" In Experiential Education As (Un)Democratic Practice, Franklin Vernon

Democracy & Education

This critical ethnography explores a social justice program utilizing nontraditional, democratic, "experiential" education practices. The author posits a historical legacy of pedagogy of self obscures its emancipatory, democratic potential while simultaneously expanding on contemporary discourses of self and other as aspects of the educational setting. Students' labors to reference and enact oppressive, capitalistic idealizations of either self or other problematizes pragmatic theories of self, and the author draws upon critical pragmatism to reposition self and other as aspects of pedagogy and curriculum in democratic education.

Evoking Students’ Curiosity And Complicating Their Historical Thinking Through Manageable, Engaging Confusion, John Bickford, Molly Bickford

Faculty Research and Creative Activity

STATE AND NATIONAL educational initiatives have increasedexpectations for students’ historical thinking and civic involvement. 1Guidance for relevant, purposeful classroom experiences with ageappropriate, rigorous content has never been clearer, 2 yet teachersstill feel unprepared.3 Towards these ends, we direct attention to theantecedent of discovery: confusion. Confusion sparks the motivationto explore and solve mysteries. Manageable, engaging mysteriesprovide students the space and incentive to explore for answers theyknow are discoverable. Teachers can position students to identifythe enigma as they scrutinize the documents; educators shouldrecognize, and ease, students’ emergent frustration with clues. UsingLev Vygotsky’s zone o f proximal development as a guide,4 educatorsshould provide …

A Qualitative Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experiences Of Adults In The North Georgia Area That Were Retained In Grades K-12, Betsy Green

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand the impact retention has had on the lived experiences of adults in the North Georgia area that were retained in their K-12 education. The 10 participants were adults over the age of 18 that live in a rural North Georgia community and have experienced retention. The sampling was purposive and took place at public schools in Mountain Town, Georgia. The research questions for this study were: • How is the experience of grade retention remembered by adults retained in their K-12 education? • How has K-12 retention impacted self-efficacy, the …

Community College Students' Academic Success And Persistence In Math Courses After Developmental Math: A Case Study, Robin Bontrager

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative research study was a bounded case study exploring how and why community college students achieved academic success after completion of the developmental math sequence and a college level math course. The purpose of this research was to explore how and why community college students were academically successful in college algebra or elementary statistics after completion of the developmental math sequence. For the purpose of this study, the students' changes in behavior that influenced academic success and persistence in their math courses were generally defined as involvement in academic support programs, integration into social groups, and the perception of …

Elementary And Secondary Special Education Teachers Experiences Of Inclusion For Students With Moderate To Severe Disabilities: A Phenomenolgical Study, Shannon Anders

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of special education teachers regarding inclusive practices with students with moderate and severe disabilities in a rural North Carolina school district. The purpose of this research was to seek the overall essence of the lived experiences of a purposeful criterion sample of 11 special education teachers as they used inclusion strategies with their students. This study had one central question: How do rural special education teachers describe their experiences with inclusive practices for their students with moderate to severe disabilities? The theories guiding this study were Maslow’s Hierarchy …

The Effects Of Student Self-Assessment With Goal Setting On Fourth Grade Mathematics Students: Creating Self-Regulating Agents Of Learning, Laura Clift

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

With the national trend toward student accountability as learners, few studies have identified effective instructional strategies that motivate elementary students in becoming agents of learning and the effect of these strategies on academic achievement. This quantitative study investigated the effect of student self-assessment with goal setting (SAGS), based on the work of Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, and Chappuis (2006), on elementary school students’ academic achievement and motivation in mathematics. This study employed a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest, nonequivalent control-group design. Participants were 130 students drawn from six intact classes of fourth graders from five elementary schools located in a large Archdiocese in the …

How Educator Attitudes, Knowledge, And Practice Impact The Academic Achievement Of Students Who Have Epilepsy: A Phenomenological Investigation Of Canadian Secondary School Teachers, Tawnya Fanjoy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover how teacher attitude, knowledge, and practice with epilepsy impact the academic achievement of students who have epilepsy. This study assumed that middle school teachers perceive students diagnosed with epilepsy as lower academic achievers when compared to students who do not have epilepsy. The stigma associated with labels, such as epileptic, can negatively impact the academic performance of children with this disorder. For this study, stigma was generally defined as the negative perceptions about epilepsy held by middle school teachers. The participants included six middle school teachers from the Anglophone West School …

A Phenomenological Study Of Public School Biology Teachers Who Believe In The Literal Genesis Account Of Creation, Eric Dougherty

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

he purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the experiences of Christian public high school biology teachers who believe in a literal, young earth account of creation as revealed in the book of Genesis. There is a gap in the literature regarding understanding the teaching experiences of Christians who believe in a strict interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis. This study was conducted by interviewing 11 Christian public school biology teachers from multiple states who met the criteria for being identified as young earth creationists. Data were also collected through a focus group and reflective vignettes. Data were …

A Qualitative Grounded Theory Study In Understanding The Teacher/Student Relationship In The College English Freshman Composition Classroom, Jean Tweedy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative grounded theory study is focused on the teacher/student relationship that develops in a freshman composition class when writing is being taught and how that relationship exists during the writing process. Notes were generated through field observation of three freshman English 101 classes, personal interviews with 12 students who were members of the three freshman English 101 classes observed by me, and final grade records for each student in each class obtained from the registrar’s office. The ability and perceived willingness of the English teacher to communicate with students is the prime motivating factor for confidence within the students …

How Science Teachers Balance Religion And Evolution In The Science Classroom: A Case Study Of Science Classes In A Florida Public School District, Pierre Willems

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this case study was to research how science teachers balance both religion and evolution in the science classroom with as little controversy as possible. In this study I attempted to provide some insight on how teachers are currently teaching evolution in their science classes in light of the religious beliefs of the students as well as their own. The case study was conducted in a school district in Florida where I attempted to answer the following questions: (a) How do science teachers in the Florida School District (FSD) approach the religion–evolution issue in preparing students for a …

The Effect Of A Minimum Credit Diploma Pathway On High School Graduation Rate, Teresa Strickland

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

There are many paths to high school graduation. The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act has driven schools to be creative in seeking strategies by which students successfully earn their high¬¬¬¬ school diploma. In this non-experimental, causal-comparative study, a large Western North Carolina school district utilizes a minimum credit diploma to help students who previously experienced repeated academic failure achieve high school graduation by earning 21 course credits. The district requires traditional diploma-seeking students to earn seven additional credits to the 21 required by the State. Participants included high school graduates from the 2013-2014 school year. Both traditional …

Student Athletes’ Perception Of Sexual Harassment, Lynn Hunt Long, Regina Rahimi, Delores D. Liston

Curriculum, Foundations & Reading: Faculty Publications

Purpose: This qualitative study examined the perceptions of student athletes regarding sexual harassment and other forms of gendered harassment (homophobic bullying) as well as knowledge of and/or experiences with harassment in high school and university settings, primarily in athletic school culture.

Methodology: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-seven former high school athletes/active university athletes. The data were analyzed regarding theme and their relationship to the reviewed literature.

Findings: Findings indicate that the athletic culture poses particular issues pertaining to the vulnerabilities and persistence of sexual bullying and harassment.

Discussion: Educators, coaches, and administrators must understand harassment, work to establish and …

Examining Inclusive Programming In A Middle School Library: A Case Study Of Adolescents Who Are Differently- And Typically-Able, Clayton A. Copeland, Karen W. Gavigan Dr.

Faculty Publications

Numerous national and international studies have shown the importance of school libraries and librarians in students’ educations, including literacy skill development and academic achievement. However, published research investigating school library accessibility and services from the perspectives of students who are differently-able are extremely limited, as are studies of inclusive library programming, or programming serving both typically-able and differently-able students. This case study examines inclusive library programming with adolescents in a middle school library. Findings indicate that the impact of inclusive school library programming was meaningful and often extended beyond the library’s walls. Inclusive library programming resulted in skill development among …

The Bank Street Program: Child Growth And Learning In Social Studies Experiences (1952), Charlotte B. Winsor

Bank Street Thinkers

"The teachers and psychologists who are the Bank Street group lay no claim to the discovery of any new axioms in educational practice. They have invented no method, no device, no gadget that opens magic doors to learning. What they have done is to establish principles based upon the needs and purposes of children, related to the world in which they live..." This article illustrates a program at City and Country School in which class jobs, such as running the school post office, supply store, and printing shop form the base for social studies experiences. Applying a philosophy similar to …