Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Reflections On A Fellowship And Time As A Dei Coordinator With Oscar Fernandez, Oscar Fernandez

PDXPLORES Podcast

In this episode of PDXPLORES, Dr. Óscar Fernández, a contingent faculty member in University Studies at Portland State University, discusses his work during a diversity fellowship at UC Irvine. That work resulted in the forthcoming essay, "Queering a Coordinator's Diversity, Equity, and Illusion (DEI) Work in Academe: Disappointments, Self-Deceits, and Hopes Disclosed," to be published by the University of California Humanities Research Institute's journal Foundry. Fernández opens up about his experiences as a DEI officer for University Studies, how that experience informed his essay, and thinking about DEI efforts within the context of higher education.

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Headaches And Humility: Introducing Preservice Teachers To Undergraduate Research, J. Scott Baker

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

For some teacher educators, the singular goal of teacher preparation is to license new teachers, not develop critical thinkers. This lack of thinking beyond lesson plans, course standards, and classroom management to explore high impact practices – such as undergraduate research – leads to the deterioration of the education field and limits preservice teachers’ understandings of their own curricular and pedagogical practices. This article is a poetic reflection – through headaches and humility – on how 157 preservice teachers (PTs) made connections between curricular research and practice. The article also addresses steps taken by a teacher educator to ensure their …

Serving Queer And Trans Parent Families Through Research: A Conversation With Associate Editor Shain Wright, Shain L. Wright, Maika Yeigh

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Recently, NWJTE had the opportunity to sit down with Shain Wright, the Associate Editor of NWJTE and also doctoral candidate at Washington State University, in the Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education program. Shain researches intersections between queer and trans families and social systems. Specifically, Shain explores the discursive erasure of queer and trans families in education, and familys’ resiliency, joy, and sense of community. With Shain’s work on the NWJTE, we wanted to showcase their cutting edge work and thought generating research that acknowledges and celebrates queer and trans parent families.

Oer In University Language Courses, Jenny Ceciliano

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer incredible advantages in language teaching and learning. Implementing an OER curriculum can result in benefits that go far beyond controlling costs for students, which is itself a significant step toward improving equity. Drawing on your own experience and expertise as language educators, as well as the contributions of collaborators around the world, it is possible to build a curriculum customized for your unique student group. With thoughtful design, your program can help students achieve desired learning outcomes not just in language acquisition, but also in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In this talk, I will …

Urban Literacy: Learning To Read The City Around You, Leanne Claire Serbulo

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

This book introduces students to the basic concepts of urban studies. It is an interdisciplinary text that was developed for lower-division undergraduate students. The book is organized into thematic chapters that explore different aspects of urban life, such as the environment, housing, and culture. Each chapter introduces a new way of conceptualizing the city, presents core theories and concepts, and provides examples and case studies from cities around the globe to illustrate the ideas presented in the text. At the end of each chapter, there are review questions and a series of interactive field activities where students can apply the …

Equity & Social Justice In Mathematics Education With Eva Thanheiser, Eva Thanheiser

PDXPLORES Podcast

Professor Eva Thanheiser's research lies at the intersections of mathematics education, social justice, and critical theory. In her work, she collaborates with teachers, students, parents, and community members to develop and implement anti-bias mathematics education that allows students to connect mathematics to their worlds. In this episode of PDXPLORES, Thanheiser discusses this work and its impact on mathematics education.

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"Like A Family": Fostering A Sense Of Belonging In A Minority Majority University Classroom, David Peterson Del Mar, Raya Alkharroubi, Arina Borodkina, Kenyn Davila Samayoa, Daira Maldonado Ortega, Jennifer Marquez Marquez, Laihha Organna, Estefani Reyes Moreno, Han Tran, Brianna Tuy, Tony Vo

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This Teaching Note, co-authored by nine university students and their Peer Mentor and professor, at the end of a year-long course, argues that the growing socio-cultural gap between students and faculty requires pedagogies that foster a sense of student belonging by faculty becoming "more receptive than authoritative." All of these students are from immigrant families, and most felt very anxious upon arriving at Portland State University and feared that they did not belong. Co-creating a space of mutual vulnerability enabled students to feel both cared for and confident.

Open Education Faculty Panel, Jenny Ceciliano, Lindsey Wilkinson, Staci Martin, Norma Cardenas

Open Education Week 2022

Many faculty at PSU have been involved in the Open Education movement. This panel of PSU faculty members discusses how Open Education has affected their teaching practice and how Open Education relates to equity and inclusion.

Our panelists are:

• Jenny Ceciliano, Senior Instructor II of Spanish/Coordinator of First-year Spanish, World Languages and Literatures
• Lindsey Wilkinson, Associate Professor, Sociology
• Staci Martin, Assistant Professor of Practice, CYFS Practicum Coordinator Child, Youth, and Family Studies, School of Social Work
• Norma Cardenas, Assistant Professor of Practice Child, Youth, and Family Studies, School of Social Work

Fostering Resiliency And Care Integrating Self-Compassion Into A Graduate Course, Heather L. Burns

Educational Leadership and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Self-compassion, which involves mindful awareness of feelings and offering ourselves compassion, has been shown to support balancing emotions, overcoming challenges, and achieving goals. This action research study integrated self-compassion theory and practice in a graduate course in which students wrote their final comprehensive papers in sustainability education. This study found that self-compassion practice resulted in more self-awareness, more acceptance of difficult emotions, and more ability to handle stress. Additionally, students experienced more clarity and calm in the writing process and began to integrate self-compassion into their lives and work. This study points to the promise of self-compassion as a beneficial …

Examining Perspectives Of Immigrant Working Learners & Education Providers: Crt As Analytical Framework, Jen Vanek, Kathy Harris, Gloria E. Jacobs, Jill Castek

21CLEO Presentations and Publications

Research questions in this article include:

• What supports English learners’ participation and engagement in workplace learning?

• Who gets access to learning opportunities?

• Whose workplace learning leads to advancement?
• What do the perspectives of adult working learners reveal about their education and training when viewed through a CRT lens?

"We Support You... To An Extent": Identities, Intersections, And Family Support Among First-Generation Students In A School Of Social Work, Miranda Mosier

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Family support is a critical part of college student retention. Given the strength of parental educational attainment in predicting access and persistence among college students (Choy, 2001), some have questioned the capacity for families to support first-generation college students. Family support may be especially critical for first-generation college students, who value interdependence more highly than continuing generation students (Stephens et al., 2012). This paper centers the perspectives of first-generation students in a school of social work and their experiences of family support. Focus group conversations were analyzed using the Listening Guide/Voice-centered relational data analysis (Brown & Gilligan, 1992). My interpretations …

Who We Are: Focus On… Student Identity, Yarina Aguilar Becerra, Cecilia Diojuan, Jasmine Walker, Neera Malhotra, David Peterson Del Mar, Vicki Reitenauer

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In short

• Increasingly, professionals in higher education are acknowledging the short- and long-term impacts on individuals and communities of institutional failures to create welcoming, inclusive, and caring environments for traditionally underrepresented students.
• Student voices, reflecting on their lived and felt experiences in college, have been less frequently present in the discussions about inclusion in higher education.
• Listening to students from underrepresented groups has the potential to redefine and renew how we understand education and ourselves, offering a template and a foundation for the dense network of relationships that a student-focused institution of higher education ought to aspire to and build …

Unlearn: Preparing Preservice Teachers As Antiracist Educators, April Eddie

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores a Teacher Education faculty member’s approach in providing preservice teachers a holistic, antiracist preparation that includes prioritizing the hiring of Black and Brown faculty, teaching critical pedagogies, and providing diverse experiences to enhance their theoretical and classroom learning. Although research that explores the impact of race and education exists, more is needed if we are to deconstruct the impact of antiblackness in Teacher Education programs.

Black Liberation In Teacher Education: (Re)Envisioning Educator Preparation To Defend Black Life And Possibility, Justin A. Coles, Darrius Stanley

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Current configurations of teacher education programs are insufficient in attracting and producing teachers equipped to teach through the permanence of antiblackness, instead still relying on race-neutral or color-evasive pedagogies that perpetuate the misrecognition of antiblackness. As evident by the sustained inequities experienced by Black children and the routine marginalization of Black (teacher) educators in the field, we recognize that teacher education programs, and subsequently P-12 classrooms, are not designed nor equipped to reduce the harm caused by persistent anti-Black racism. Despite the ways Blackness is derided and invisibilized in educator preparation, Black students, families, and communities have long countered anti-Black …

Reflections On The Politics Of Professionalism: Critical Autoethnographies Of Anti-Blackness In The Ela Classroom, Stephanie P. Jones, Robert P. Robinson

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

As Black educators, we are implanted with testimonies of how our pedagogies remained in close proximity to whiteness. We employ antiblackness and critical race theory frameworks. Through what we call vignettes of repair we address ourselves and our students to first, repair the harm we caused and second, to engage in collective witnessing that makes room for (re)claiming and (re)membering our own knowledge. From our critical reflection, we propose that teacher educators engage in a similar practice for their prospective teachers.

This Ain't Yo' Mama's Composition Class: Addressing Anti-Blackness By Implementing Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Sharanna B. Brown

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

Kyoko Kishimoto writes that those who practice anti-racist pedagogical practices are not only required to teach about race, but instead "teach about race and racism in a way that fosters critical analytical skills, which reveal the power relations behind racism and how race has been institutionalized in U.S. society to create and justify inequalities" (541). This is the work. And I have chosen to do it.

Steeped in anti-racist pedagogy “This Ain’t Yo’ Mama’s Composition Course” aims to explore the ways that writing classrooms can affirm students’ autonomy while simultaneously equipping them with skills that equate to “cultural capital.” Anti-racist …

Pdx Protests, Summer 2020: A Syllabus And Timeline, Francheska Cannone, Nate Belcik, Macy Franken, Kelly Green, Sarah Harris, Philippe Kerstens, Vicky White, Katrine Barber

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

This syllabus and timeline of the protests organized in Portland throughout the summer and early fall of 2020 was compiled and written by Portland State University students enrolled in Professor Katrine Barber’s HST 4/593, Introduction to Public History in Fall 2020. It was prepared in partnership with the Oregon State University Press and presented to them at the conclusion of the course. It combines local Portland journalism with a number of other scholarly resources to attempt to answer the question: “Why Portland?” The goals of the project at the outset were to correct inaccuracies or oversights in national coverage of …

Entertainment-Education Behind The Scenes: Case Studies For Theory And Practice, Lauren B. Frank, Paul Falzone

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This Open Access book tracks the latest trends in the theory, research, and practice of entertainment-education, the field of communication that incorporates social change messaging into entertaining media. Sometimes called edutainment, social impact television, narrative persuasion, or cultural strategy, this approach to social and behavior change communication offers new opportunities including transmedia and digital formats. However, making media can be a chaotic process. The realities of working in the field and the rigid structures of scholarly evaluation often act as barriers to honest accounts of entertainment-education practice. In this collection of essays, experienced practitioners offer unique insight into how entertainment-education …

An Existential Philosophy Of History, Bennett Gilbert, Natan Elgabsi

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper we delineate the conditions and features of what we call an existential philosophy of history in relation to customary trends in the field of the philosophy of history. We do this by circumscribing what a transgenerational temporality and what our entanglement in ethical relations with temporal others ask of us as existential and responsive selves and by explicating what attitude we need to have when trying to responsibly respond to other vulnerable beings in our historical world of life.

Book Review Of, Unimpeded Volition: William Of Ockham: Questions On Goodness, Virtue, And The Will, Bennett B. Gilbert

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book Review of: Unimpeded volition Eric W. Hagedorn (trans. & ed.): William of Ockham: questions on goodness, virtue, and the will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, xxvii + 344pp, $110.00 HB. ISBN 9781108498388

“Building That World”: Movements Of Vision In The Carceral Classroom, Rhiannon M. Cates, Benjamin J. Hall, James Broughton, Andrew Reeves, Faith Hocutt Ringwelski, Kathryn Zaro, Jenna Richards, Lani Roberts

Library Faculty and Staff Publications and Presentations

An article in which two teaching assistants and six students of a university course taught inside a correctional facility, "Writing as Activism," collaboratively examine their experience as co-teachers and co-learners in a humanities-based prison classroom. Fostered and framed by their instructor’s critical and transformative pedagogical approaches in this course, the authors locate integrated learning and collaborative writing within carceral classrooms as sites for intentional and resistant futures to be enacted and embodied as a practice of post-carceral world-building. The students enter their individual narratives into this location of their experience of envisioning and enacting resistant futures together in this space …

Reflections On Bodies And Absences In The Covid-19 Interregnum, Matthew Weinstein

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This is a meditation on the role of absence during the COVID-19, especially the ways absences are felt and experienced. It explores the roles of bodies as both symbols and material. Bodies are both thought through the logic of borders and difference but also as the raw resources of scientific investigations. This is all examined within and against “education” both in my and in my students’ (pre and in-service teachers) classes and our anxieties of not knowing the what or how we of our jobs in these conditions.

Teacher Education In A Dangerous Time: (Re)Imagining Education For Diversity, Democracy And Sustainability, John J. Lupinacci

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This article amplifies the importance of social movements like Black Lives Matter and diverse critical educator responses to social suffering, COVID-19, and related critiques of current dominant assumptions of teacher education and Western schooling. The author offers an ecocritical conceptual framework to support education to recognize the importance of how teachers, and teacher educators, can take action as leaders (re)imagining education in support of valuing diversity, democracy, and sustainability. This article calls for an ecocritical pedagogical (re)imagining of how teacher education might be (re)constituted through local activist teaching in collaboration with social movements and in support of social justice and …

Are They Safe? Are They Fed?: Reimagining Inclusion In Schooling During A Pandemic, Teresa Anne Fowler

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This paper, using the method of currere, offers a rendering of the relationship between technology, inclusion, and social justice within education amid a walking through of Roy's Pandemic as a Portal metaphor. Educators are sitting in a critical moment to which pedagogic approaches can shift from educators responded to students assumed needs towards students expressed needs as we are seeing happening during the global pandemic.

Creating A Foundation Of Well-Being For Teachers And Students Starts With Sel Curriculum In Teacher Education Programs, Deirdre Katz, Julia Mahfouz, Sue Romas

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

During the COVID-19 crisis, it has become clear how unprepared our educational systems are to provide social and emotional support through distance learning. Despite the demands for teachers to support the social and emotional development of their students, our universities are behind the curve in providing coursework to develop their knowledge and skills in these areas. This paper calls us to imagine teacher education with Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) as a cornerstone in teacher preparation programs. We outline the importance of SEL curriculum in preservice education and suggest a multifaceted approach to teacher preparation.

Developing A Common Language Of Ethical Engagement In Teaching: Lessons For And From A Time Of Crisis, Richard D. Sawyer

Northwest Journal of Teacher Education

This article explores how educators may develop and contribute to a common language of ethical engagement, a language that rises above specific actions but is grounded in ethical practice and scholarship. Questions are raised about how online education may further the patterns educational inequities in the United States. An ethics framework is explored through a comparison. The author explores the educational principles--not standards—that educators can surface in their teaching practice. A discussion is included of recent dilemmas and problems with online teaching environments, underscoring the need for ethical principles helping to frame practice.

Teaching Remotely In The Time Of Covid-19: Answering Frequently Asked Questions: A Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Coordinator Perspective, Óscar Fernández

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

FAQ about teaching online in the time of COVID-19. My FAQ is based on three experiences:

1. my role as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordinator (2017-2020) in University Studies;
2. I teach a fully online SINQ course, Healthy People/Healthy Places; and
3. for the past year (AY 2019-2020), I have been interviewing University Studies faculty about online teaching and learning. Why? I am hoping to propose an online Immigration, Migration, and Belonging FRINQ in the near future.

Theater Over Textbooks: How A Neuroscience Outreach Group Utilizing Art In S.T.E.M. Provides Cost-Effective Strategies In Tackling The United States Education Gap, Camden Grant Howard, William Griesar

University Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to summarize the relevant research for the evaluation of a S.T.E.A.M.-based, grassroots, neuroscience outreach group called 'NW Noggin'. This paper discusses the benefits and skills of S.T.E.M. in learning, the benefits and skills of S.T.E.A.M. in learning, educational disparities within the United States, educational outreach groups how they are currently assessed as well as more innovative arts-based and inquiry-based alternative assessments of student knowledge. This paper then focuses on the nonprofit NW Noggin to discuss their goals and activities and possible options for program assessment. This thesis also discusses how they fulfill their civic …

Teaching Spanish In The United States In The Digital Age: Strategies And Approaches On Teaching Spanish In Online And Hybrid Classes, Liane She, Eli Sears

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Virtual technologies are omnipresent in everyday life and are becoming essential to either online, or hybrid classes. In higher education institutions in the United States, virtual platforms are increasingly used for teaching Spanish as a foreign language to students from varying backgrounds. As such, this article proposes an approach to teaching grammar in virtual spaces, that takes into account the communicative goals established in a given syllabus. The methods and strategies we propose offer an attractive language course that allows students to remotely learn and practice a language. As Spanish professors who teach beginning to intermediate level students, we will …

Investigating A Multiple Mentor Model In Research Training For Undergraduates Traditionally Underrepresented In Biomedical Sciences, Thomas E. Keller, Jennifer Lindwall

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Models of persistence and success in undergraduate research training emphasize the importance of engagement and integration across social, educational, research, and career settings. Students are likely to benefit from multiple sources of mentoring to meet their multidimensional needs for support across these domains. As part of a comprehensive training initiative for traditionally underrepresented students aspiring to careers in biomedical research, BUILD EXITO implemented a multiple mentoring model matching each undergraduate scholar with a research mentor, a faculty mentor, and a peer mentor. By design, each mentor has a different functional role. This study investigates whether the nature of support scholars …