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Articles 1 - 30 of 118
Full-Text Articles in Elementary Education
“It Was Hard, But It Worked:” Children’S Theories Of Learning To Read, Cristina Valencia Mazzanti, Laura Tiktin-Sharick, Madeleine Zuck, Tiphareth Ananda
“It Was Hard, But It Worked:” Children’S Theories Of Learning To Read, Cristina Valencia Mazzanti, Laura Tiktin-Sharick, Madeleine Zuck, Tiphareth Ananda
Occasional Paper Series
In this paper we come together as teachers, a school leader and a professor to examine children’s theories of learning to read captured in written and illustrated texts created by 143 children currently enrolled in kindergarten to sixth grade. This collection of children’s theories of reading was created in the context of a progressive elementary school located at Smith College, a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts. Our hope in examining children’s theories is to humanize and historicize current debates about how reading is taught. We also hope to offer a counter narrative to the dichotomies currently shaping reading education, …
All Flourishing Is Mutual: Cultivating A Gift Economy Of Literacy, Lindsey Lush, Melissa Kurtz
All Flourishing Is Mutual: Cultivating A Gift Economy Of Literacy, Lindsey Lush, Melissa Kurtz
Occasional Paper Series
In this paper, two scholars and practicing elementary educators argue that the policies and practices of the Science of Reading (SoR) movement in early literacy education are being constructed with the logic of a market economy, shaped by neoliberal ideologies of individualism, scarcity, and competition. Compelled by our concerns for the bodies and beings of readers and reading teachers in the context of our Northeast Georgia public elementary school and provoked by our shared engagement with The Serviceberry, Indigenous scientist and scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book on lessons from the natural world, we engage a postqualitative approach to emergent, relational …
When Science Of Reading Policy Meets Classroom Reality: The Nonsense Word Problem, Lisa Dewing-Birno, Luis Lopez
When Science Of Reading Policy Meets Classroom Reality: The Nonsense Word Problem, Lisa Dewing-Birno, Luis Lopez
Occasional Paper Series
A central feature of many Science of Reading (SoR)-aligned curricula is the use of nonsense words in early literacy assessment to measure a student's ability to decode unfamiliar words using knowledge of letter-sound correspondences. However, the research base for using nonsense words as an instructional tool is much weaker and more contested. Through two narratives, we illustrate how the implementation of SoR instruction with nonsense words can be particularly problematic. We argue that effective literacy instruction demands what we call pedagogical clarity, the ability to integrate pedagogical practices with deep understanding of individual learners, their cultural and linguistic resources, and …
Uplifting The Legacy Of Black Teachers: Loving And Liberatory Pedagogies In A Science Of Reading Context, Natasha A. Thornton, Amanda L. Armstrong, Brooke Blacknall, Jordan Freeman, Elaine Nevers-Williams, Mukkaramah Smith
Uplifting The Legacy Of Black Teachers: Loving And Liberatory Pedagogies In A Science Of Reading Context, Natasha A. Thornton, Amanda L. Armstrong, Brooke Blacknall, Jordan Freeman, Elaine Nevers-Williams, Mukkaramah Smith
Occasional Paper Series
This article explores Black liberatory pedagogy (BLP) as a critical approach to navigating current Science of Reading (SoR) mandates, which are often restrictive and fail to honor the literacies and linguistic practices of Black children. Through the narratives of six educators—classroom teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators—the article examines how they have experienced and responded to the implementation of SoR standards and curriculum shifts. These stories also illuminate what becomes possible when teachers are in spaces that allow for autonomy, imagination, and culturally responsive pedagogy. The educators’ experiences, expertise, and cultural wisdom are centered, demonstrating how they enact BLP through …
Why Indigenous Children’S Literature Matters: A Native Hawaiian Perspective, Julie Kaomea
Why Indigenous Children’S Literature Matters: A Native Hawaiian Perspective, Julie Kaomea
Occasional Paper Series
No abstract provided.
Singing In Dark Times: Improvisational Singing With Children Amidst Ecological Crisis, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson
Singing In Dark Times: Improvisational Singing With Children Amidst Ecological Crisis, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson
Occasional Paper Series
Through this research-creation project -- which is represented by a process-driven ten-minute video -- the author asks what ways of knowing emerge when children and adults, more-than-human, and inhuman engage in improvised singing together in an urban park? This project recognizes our current "dark times" within ecological collapse and operates from a space that hopes to build relationality with sonic ecologies through listening-and-singing experiences, while centering the voices of children and other singers within the ecologies we sing in-and-with.
Painting Our Treescapes: A Visual, Gretel Olson, Ingrid Olson, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson
Painting Our Treescapes: A Visual, Gretel Olson, Ingrid Olson, Stephanie Schuurman-Olson
Occasional Paper Series
Two children (ages 6 and 9) represent an afternoon spent in their urban, wintery treescape through visual art, photo documentation, and written narrative. The first piece, "My Imaginary Forest", considers the seasons, animals, and issues of artistic representation of nature. The second piece describes the relationship between a favourite tree and a child, and considers others -- both present and future -- who also occupy "Our Knotty Tree". All of the words, visual art, and photo selection are those of the children.
Making Kin With Trees: Three Educators And Children Entangled With Treescapes, Stephanie Jones, Lindsey Lush, Sarah Whitaker
Making Kin With Trees: Three Educators And Children Entangled With Treescapes, Stephanie Jones, Lindsey Lush, Sarah Whitaker
Occasional Paper Series
In this article, three educators from one small U.S. city draw on Donna Haraway’s feminist, posthumanist idea of making kin to explore their personal relations with trees and their work as educators to support children’s entanglements with trees. Working in three very different contexts with children: a working-class neighborhood, a public school kindergarten, and a forest kindergarten, the three authors illuminate the “magical” emergences of making kin with trees that fundamentally shifts what becomes possible to do and be. Their writing contributes to the fields of critical childhood geographies, feminist posthumanist pedagogies in early childhood education, and writing in affect …
Children As Design Visionaries, Learners, And Socio-Political Wayfinders: Mapping The Layers, Hierarchies, And Rhythms Of A School Community, Natalie R. Davis, Roni Barsoum
Children As Design Visionaries, Learners, And Socio-Political Wayfinders: Mapping The Layers, Hierarchies, And Rhythms Of A School Community, Natalie R. Davis, Roni Barsoum
Occasional Paper Series
Despite the seemingly intractable problems of public schooling, we (as researchers and dreamers) remain encouraged by the persistent efforts to reconfigure and reimagine the sociopolitical landscape of schools. We begin this essay by recognizing the work of individuals bravely and imperfectly expanding notions of what schools could and should be. We stand in solidarity with the innovators sowing, designing, and reaching toward more just social futures, dreaming of schools for children that are not so distant from the paradise Butler (2001) describes (Figure 1). This liberatory dreamwork coincides with long histories of communal ingenuity (Vossoughi et al., 2016), resistance against …
Progressive Virtual Learning For Our Youngest Learners, Erica B. Held
Progressive Virtual Learning For Our Youngest Learners, Erica B. Held
Graduate Student Independent Studies
This study addresses how teachers build a progressive curriculum online for our youngest learners.
Empowering Students Toward Empathy, Awareness, And Respect Through The Discussion Of High Quality Children’S Literature, Jesse Blumberg
Empowering Students Toward Empathy, Awareness, And Respect Through The Discussion Of High Quality Children’S Literature, Jesse Blumberg
Graduate Student Independent Studies
This paper explores the importance of utilizing high quality books with elementary-aged students to encourage their ability to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate similarities and differences in our society.
Fighting For Justice In Education: How Schools Can Lead The Change Towards A More Equitable World, Tara Kirton
Fighting For Justice In Education: How Schools Can Lead The Change Towards A More Equitable World, Tara Kirton
Occasional Paper Series
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine the world anew. This one is no different” (Roy, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has had tremendous implications for every aspect of life. School, work, celebrations and everyday social interactions have all felt the repercussions of the pandemic. While the shutdown called for an immediate pivot from our everyday ways of being, it has also provided opportunities for stillness and deep reflection. This moment of pause has provided an opportunity to think, speak and act differently. As a parent my hope is that educators will lead the change.
The Role Of The Father In The Young Child’S Life And Development: What Do Early Childhood Teachers Need To Know?, Charlotte Silver
The Role Of The Father In The Young Child’S Life And Development: What Do Early Childhood Teachers Need To Know?, Charlotte Silver
Graduate Student Independent Studies
The contribution of the father to the young child’s life and development has been looked at far less than that of the mother. This paper analyzes how fathers impact the development of growing children and why this issue matters to early childhood educators. By extension, it analyzes the impact of a father’s absence. In today’s society of increasingly diverse parenting structures, many children are growing up in fatherless households. For such children, teachers may prove to be significant figures in the hierarchy of attachment. This paper begins with a brief history of attachment theory. It then provides an overview of …
Playing Through Tragedy: A Critical Approach To Welcoming Children’S Social Worlds And Play As Pedagogy, Cassie Brownell
Playing Through Tragedy: A Critical Approach To Welcoming Children’S Social Worlds And Play As Pedagogy, Cassie Brownell
Occasional Paper Series
Children’s play frequently reflects the ways they understand and cope with personal life experiences and those in the wider world. Drawing connections to many of the tenants of Jonathan Silin’s lifelong work, the author offers illustrative examples of why play and children's social worlds matter as well as why adults should pay attention to what children do and say in their play. Through personal stories, the author shows how integrating play(full) experiences into the daily life of a classroom can foster children's understanding of seemingly "difficult" or "adult" ideas and events that may be confusing, fear-inducing or represent significant loss. …
Five Domains For Transforming Teacher Preparation, Charlotte Wells, Karen Demoss, Divya Mansukhani, Zach Paull
Five Domains For Transforming Teacher Preparation, Charlotte Wells, Karen Demoss, Divya Mansukhani, Zach Paull
Prepared to Teach
This report describes the process of establishing the current Prepared To Teach theory of change, which supports national communities of practice in five domains identified by the Network's learning agenda in the 2019-2020 school year: mindset shifts, educator roles, labor market alignment, school improvement, and deeper learning. Read how these five domains are explored through existing residency partnership programs, how individual programs both solidified and strengthened existing partnerships, and important insights into how to expand and share the benefits partnerships can reap through their work together. Finally, explore how the domains center the need for systemic changes built upon the …
If I Knew Then What I Do Now: Fostering Pre-Service Teachers’ Capacity To Promote Expansive And Critical Conversations With Children’S Literature, Stephen Adam Crawley
If I Knew Then What I Do Now: Fostering Pre-Service Teachers’ Capacity To Promote Expansive And Critical Conversations With Children’S Literature, Stephen Adam Crawley
Occasional Paper Series
In this article, I reflect on my practices as a teacher educator and respond to the following questions: How do I foster the capacity of pre-service teachers to use children’s literature to promote expansive and critical conversations in the classroom? How do pre-service teachers report their stances and sense of preparedness when reflecting on the course? To address these questions, I share two strategies I employed in my undergraduate course for elementary education majors: 1) emphasizing children's literature as windows and mirrors and 2) considering stakeholder responses. For each strategy, I include preservice teachers’ (PTs’) statements that reflect how the …
What Do You Do When You Don't Know How To Respond? Supporting Pre-Service Teachers To Use Picture Books To Facilitate Difficult Conversations, Kathryn Struthers Ahmed, Nida Ali
What Do You Do When You Don't Know How To Respond? Supporting Pre-Service Teachers To Use Picture Books To Facilitate Difficult Conversations, Kathryn Struthers Ahmed, Nida Ali
Occasional Paper Series
In this paper, the authors – a preservice teacher (PST) and a teacher educator – consider how teacher education might better prepare PSTs to use picture books to facilitate difficult conversations in elementary classrooms. They share missed opportunities from their own experiences in a fourth-grade fieldwork classroom and in a graduate-level elementary literacy methods course where they felt unprepared to respond to students’ comments about “controversial” topics. They reimagine how these experiences might have been transformed to be more educative for PSTs, first by considering how they could have responded more thoughtfully in the moment and then by thinking about …
Focus On Friendship Or Fights For Civil Rights? Teaching The Difficult History Of Japanese American Incarceration Through The Bracelet, Noreen N. Rodríguez
Focus On Friendship Or Fights For Civil Rights? Teaching The Difficult History Of Japanese American Incarceration Through The Bracelet, Noreen N. Rodríguez
Occasional Paper Series
Japanese American incarceration is one of few Asian American historical topics addressed in P-12 curriculum. A dearth of children’s literature is available about Japanese American incarceration, yet given young learners’ limited exposure to World War II historical narratives, simply reading a picturebook about the topic does not ensure that students and teachers will address the injustices involved in the event. This study contrasts the distinct pedagogical approaches taken up by two Texas elementary educators who read aloud Yoshiko Uchida’s The Bracelet, a picturebook that details a young Japanese American girl’s forced removal from her home.
We Are All Learning About Climate Change: Teaching With Picture Books To Engage Teachers And Students, Ysaaca D. Axelrod, Denise Ives, Rachel Weaver
We Are All Learning About Climate Change: Teaching With Picture Books To Engage Teachers And Students, Ysaaca D. Axelrod, Denise Ives, Rachel Weaver
Occasional Paper Series
The topic of climate change and climate justice is politically charged, doesn’t sit neatly within a single subject or content area, and raises concerns of not being ‘age appropriate’ for young children. In this paper we describe how teacher educators in an elementary education program support a student teacher who took up the topic of climate change and climate justice in her 1st grade teaching placement. She designed a unit around a picture book that focuses on the words and work of Greta Thunberg, and used a diverse set of texts to support students’ understanding of the complexity of climate …
Looking For Trouble And Causing Trauma, Marquita D. Foster
Looking For Trouble And Causing Trauma, Marquita D. Foster
Occasional Paper Series
The purpose of this paper is to examine the genuine but misguided efforts to address the behaviors of Pre-K students in a Texas public school. After espousing the concept of building strong children through correction, evaluation, and intervention in my role as assistant principal, I began to question how these methods tended to lead to pathologizing the behaviors of Black pre-kindergarteners in my school. In an attempt to find solutions to the children's perceived misbehavior, Pre-K teachers were charged with utilizing PBIS strategies and the RTI process for behavior. Social and emotional learning (SEL) was also considered. We discovered that …
Imagine: A Picture Book About Imaginary Play In New York City, Natasha Peña
Imagine: A Picture Book About Imaginary Play In New York City, Natasha Peña
Graduate Student Independent Studies
This paper describes the process of researching, creating, sharing, and reflecting on a picture book that features two New York City siblings engaging in imaginary play at the playground.
Choosing Advocacy
Occasional Paper Series
Two articles comprise this publication. In "Beyond the Story-Book Ending: Literature for Young Children About Parental Estrangement and Loss," Megan Matt analyzes over 30 books for young children on the topics of abandonment, estrangement, divorce, and foster care. She observes that this loss might appear as an event within the story or as a fear articulated by a young child. She states that, as an educator, she hopes that she can make the children realize that their own stories are "real" and legitimate, no matter what messages they might encounter or fail to encounter in the media. In "Walking the …
Toward A More Loving Framework For Literacy Education
Toward A More Loving Framework For Literacy Education
Occasional Paper Series
No abstract provided.
Claiming The Promise Of Place-Based Education
Claiming The Promise Of Place-Based Education
Occasional Paper Series
No abstract provided.
The “Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations” And Its Role In Maintaining White Supremacy Through Mathematics Education, Laurie Rubel, Andrea V. Mccloskey
The “Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations” And Its Role In Maintaining White Supremacy Through Mathematics Education, Laurie Rubel, Andrea V. Mccloskey
Occasional Paper Series
In this study, we offer an analysis of the phrase the "soft bigotry of low expectations" and considers its role in rhetoric about U.S. mathematics education policy and practice, especially in regards to Critical Mathematical Inquiry. From the phrase’s origins in a speech given by President George W. Bush in 2000, to its current use on social media, this phrase offers a lens into white supremacy and "tools of whiteness" (Picower, 2009), and their persistence in U.S. schooling paradigms, especially about mathematics. We analyze specific, recent instantiations of the phrase on blogrolls and Twitter, in addition to more implicit …
Mathematics For Whom: Reframing And Humanizing Mathematics, Cathery Yeh, Brande M. Otis
Mathematics For Whom: Reframing And Humanizing Mathematics, Cathery Yeh, Brande M. Otis
Occasional Paper Series
Mathematics for social justice allows students to see mathematics as an analytic tool to understand and influence issues important to them and their communities. Existing work in teaching mathematics for social justice often connects to secondary curriculum. But what about elementary mathematics? This paper describes the theoretical frames and gives an example of social justice-oriented mathematics with elementary-age students. We share the process of analyzing published K-6 mathematics curriculum as an entryway to engage in investigations that raise students’ awareness of social issues and to develop their mathematical power and sense of self as mathematics thinkers and doers.
Power To Change: Math As A Social-Emotional Language In A Classroom Of 4 And 5 Year Olds, Elinor J. Albin, Gretchen Vice
Power To Change: Math As A Social-Emotional Language In A Classroom Of 4 And 5 Year Olds, Elinor J. Albin, Gretchen Vice
Occasional Paper Series
Tells the story of how mathematics influenced a long term investigation around feeling powerful within an early childhood classroom. Written by Early Childhood Teacher, Elinor J. Albin, and Dean of Faculty, Gretchen Vice, this essay outlines the guiding questions by which teachers at The Advent School in Boston, MA connect mathematics to overarching themes and social-emotional learning. “Power to Change” concludes with observations about how and why mathematics provided a language for building social-emotional intelligence in four and five year olds.
Lena And Gus: Gleaning Facts From Fiction In A Story Of Self-Awareness, Christina Unhoch Mason
Lena And Gus: Gleaning Facts From Fiction In A Story Of Self-Awareness, Christina Unhoch Mason
Graduate Student Independent Studies
Lena and Gus: Gleaning facts from fiction in a story of self-awareness, an independent study by Christina Unhoch Mason, demonstrates how academic and experiential learning has informed and expanded a story idea first conceived of over a decade ago about a seal and a fish that live in Lake Baikal.
Loving America With Open Eyes: A Student-Driven Study Of U.S. Rights In The Age Of Trump, Margaret N. Becker 9828901
Loving America With Open Eyes: A Student-Driven Study Of U.S. Rights In The Age Of Trump, Margaret N. Becker 9828901
Occasional Paper Series
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, the students of my 4th grade classroom in a public school in East Harlem had lots of questions about our country. Over and over they wondered: What is a right? How can we protect ourselves when we disagree with the government? This paper stories the year-long study of rights in the United States that grew out of these questions and the learning that came out of this curriculum, as well as works to define what patriotism means to me as an educator and a citizen.
Life After The Civil War: A Fifth-Sixth Grade Curriculum To Address Post-Emancipation Discrimination As A Way To Provide Background For Lingering Inequality, Debbie Nehmad
Graduate Student Independent Studies
As part of the coursework required for EDUC 517, I decided to address an extensive gap in my own knowledge of U.S. history: the aftermath of the Civil War and Emancipation for newly freed slaves. This work felt imperative to me because of the uptick in visible racism and violence against the black community coupled with feelings that I could not respond intelligently to racist and judgmental comments I would hear from members of my community. This project includes a researched analysis of the problematic mentalities I observed and aims to address them proactively by helping middle school students develop …