Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Toward A Decolonial Creative Writing Workshop: Mbari As A Case Study In Examining Intercultural Models For Arts Education, James W. Ryan, Steve Westbrook

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The creative writing workshop has been the subject of sustained critique for its tendency to reproduce dominant cultural norms, especially in spaces where admissions to the workshop do not reflect local ethnic and cultural diversity. In an effort to aid the search for alternate models/foundations for creative writing instructions, the authors turn to the history of mbari, a cultural practice among the Owerri Igbo of Nigeria, which was briefly adapted into the pedagogical foundation for a visual arts workshop conducted between the time of Nigeria’s independence and the onset of its civil war. In its original form, mbari was a …

Jaepl Vol 27 Table Of Contents, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

TOC

A Meditation: Why Teach?, Joonna Smitherman Trapp

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

What makes teaching a vocation that continues to draw smart and talented people even though the pay can be less-than-great, the workload damaging, and the rewards from societal and political opinion currently nonexistent? Frederick Buechner, a presbyterian minister, talks about the notion of vocation in his well-known book, Wishful Thinking. Our English word “vocation” comes from vocare, a Latin word meaning “to call,” and Buechner further defines the word as signifying “the work” we are “called to do” (118). I’m always amazed at my university that teachers haven’t heard about this idea. To them, vocation smacks of career-mindedness and doesn’t …

Introduction: Finding Meaning On The Road To Hell, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

SPECIAL SECTION: CREATIVE WRITING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: WHERE ARE WE GOING? WHERE HAVE WE BEEN? Introduction: Finding Meaning on the Road to Hell

Grading, Naomi C. Gades

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Poem

Jaepl Volume 27, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Full Issue

Dear Search Applicant Committee, Naomi C. Gades

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Poem

Werk At Play: Exploring The Creative Play Of A Graduate Student Writer To Reimagine Graduate Writing In The Humanities, Michelle Lafrance, Jay Hardee

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This nontraditional essay poses the imaginative possibilities of fostering creative, intellectual play in graduate classes in the Humanities. Exploring the case study of a vlog produced by a student in a graduate seminar, the essay traces how the hybrid, multimodal writing—writing that meshes the digital conventions of creative and scholarly genres—in the course enabled this student to “reimagine” the purpose and stock moves of effective “scholarly” writing as the student blended voices, identities, and genres in his work. Creative play can be understood as an important pedagogical tool that allows graduate students to resist coercive and exclusionary processes of socialization, …

“Weaving All Of Them Together”: How Writing Majors Talk About Creative Writing, T J. Geiger

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The labels “creative” and “creative writing” serve several purposes in the discourses of undergraduate writing majors. In a study of students in two writing major programs, students often exerted significant effort to negotiate among diverse writing experiences and to integrate different understandings of writing. Their efforts mirror scholars’ conversations about negotiation and integration at the level of curricula and programs. Writing majors in this study raised issues relevant to the well-established curricular domains of theoretical knowledge, professional expertise, and civic action. They explained their insights using a mix of idiosyncratic, institutional, and disciplinary language that frequently relied on forms of …

The Pandemic Forces Us Back To Our Roots: Book Reviews Introduction, Irene Papoulis

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Book Reviews Introduction

Can We Flourish?, Christy Wenger

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Teachers and students alike can agree on one shared truth of this past academic year: it was tough. Even though many of us found our way back into classrooms, sometimes masked and sometimes not, Covid continued to present new hurdles to our tried-and-true active teaching methods. Students struggled to keep up with the social and emotional demands of the face-to-face classroom after so many pandemic interruptions over the past two years, and teachers struggled to foster engagement and make meaningful learning gains in their classes. I met weekly with the instructors in my writing program to talk through classroom engagement …

The Implementation Of Restorative Justice Practices: An Exploration Into Administrators' Experiences, Sacha Starr Helling-Christy

Education Dissertations

In this paper, transformative learning theory and restorative justice practices, as well as the empirical research done to link theory to practice, are explored. As Mezirow (2018) stated, transformative learning is “the process by which we transform problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives)—sets of assumption and expectation—to make them more inclusive, . . . open, reflective and emotionally able to change” (p. 116). In other words, people’s life experiences help shape their opinions and worldviews, and most people are resistant to change these ideas the more solidly they are planted in one’s minds as being correct. …

Back Matter, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Back Matter

An Encomium For Community College Students In Five Scenes, James Gallagher

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Books start arriving at my apartment by the boxful. As part of the committee judging the CCCC Outstanding Book Contest, I am inundated with books, and I am excited to get down to reading them. I feel like a graduate student all over again, reading things I would never read if I weren’t “made” to (New Materialisms, anyone?). Most of the books excite me and make me think about how I can move forward as a teacher of first year writing. Some of them hurt my brain. Some of them annoy me.

Review Of Pars In Practice: More Resources And Strategies For Online Writing Instructors, Jessie Borgman And Casey Mcardle, Editors, Madeline Crozier

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

The charge that “we are all online writing instructors” should resonate with any composition instructor who has taught during the Covid-19 pandemic (Borgman and McArdle 3). This exigent universal truth gives rise to the compilation of this volume. The well-timed collection builds on Borgman and McArdle’s co-authored book Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic: Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors, which earned the 2020 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award and introduced the PARS approach to online writing instruction—Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic.

Review Of Creativity And The Paris Review Interviews: A Discourse Analysis Of Famous Writers’ Composing Practices By Rhonda Leathers Dively, Heidi M. Williams

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Only by fate and fortune would an apprentice receive the opportunity to review the work of a master. Nearly 14 years after sitting as a doctoral student in her Creativity Theory course, I am pleased to review Dr. Ronda Leathers Dively’s text, Creativity and The Paris Review Interviews: A Discourse Analysis of Famous Writers’ Composing Practices. Dively has written and published on the topic of Creativity Theory since the late 90s and is notably one of the pioneers for applying Creativity Theory in the composition and expository writing classrooms.

Review Of Teaching The Way: Using The Principles Of The Art Of War To Teach Composition By Steven T. Nelson, Christian Smith

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

First, an admission, or perhaps a confession: my enthusiasm for teaching composition has been waning in the last year or two. I don’t know if it was the pandemic coupled with the resulting year on Zoom or the cumulative effect of teaching writing for the last decade and a half, but somewhere along the way it became a different experience. All too often after grading or having a lesson plan fall flat, I would repeat the first two lines from Geoffrey Sirc’s underappreciated review article, “Resisting Entropy,” when he says “Teaching writing is impossible. You have ten to fifteen weeks …

Contributors To Jaepl, Vol. 27, Wendy Ryden

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Contributors

Review Of Creativity And Chaos: Reflections On A Decade Of Progressive Change In Public Schools, 1967-1977 By Charles Suhor, Stan Scott

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

In the title of Charles Suhor’s engaging memoir, the words progressive, change, and creativity—even chaos—will I suspect light fires of the imagination for many progressively inclined teachers and other readers. That goes all the more for those of us who lived through the upheavals and exciting breakthroughs of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, who may also have fought battles, like the ones recounted by Suhor, on behalf of our own students and children, to bring progressive changes to schools and colleges. As a former professor of English and philosophy and co-chair (with my friend and colleague Irene Papoulis) of the …

Review Of Self+Culture+Writing: Autoethnography For/As Writing Studies, Rebecca Jackson And Jackie Grutsch Mckinney, Editors, Amanda E. Scott

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This volume brings together a compendium of works that explore autoethnography and its emerging applications. A qualitative approach that first appeared in the social sciences, autoethnography has recently gained traction within other disciplines over the last two decades, including rhetoric and composition studies. However, due to its theoretically and methodologically amorphous qualities, over the years researchers have struggled to firmly define autoethnography, especially as the field continues to evolve. Still, many within writing studies have championed the method and now understand it as a recursive tool for studying “the relationship between self and other and all of its dimensions” (Kafar …

Breaking Barriers: Creating Inclusive Dance Spaces For High School Students With Cerebral Palsy, Samantha Michelle Barnewolt

Dance (MFA) Theses

Abstract This thesis explores the power of positive mindsets as it relates to creative movement development in dance for students living with Cerebral Palsy (CP) who also use motorized wheelchairs. This research dives into the development of movement mantras used to break negative mindsets and create thinking strategies that encourage movement development for varied bodies. As a result of collaborative efforts between the researcher, a student living with CP, and students living without CP, this study reveals that through the removal of mental barriers which complicate the accessibility of intentional movement in dance, students with CP may overcome obstacles that …

A View From Somewhere: Situating The Public Problem In Creative Writing Workshops, Erika Luckert

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

This essay is an effort to better situate the creative writing workshop in the diverse perspectives of its participants, by drawing on parallels between critiques of the writing workshop and critiques of the idealized public sphere. Habermas’s idealized public sphere has been critiqued for privileging dominant identities, much as creative writing workshops have been critiqued for privileging white writers like me. In this essay, I begin by listening to the critiques and testimony of BIPOC writers, which reveal that workshops are hegemonic spaces that reproduce and magnify racist, sexist, and classist systems. By reading these testimonies in conversation with critiques …

Review Of Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies: Contemplative Writing Pedagogy By Christy Wenger, Matthew Overstreet

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

When given the chance to review a book for JAEPL, I immediately suggested Christy Wenger’s Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies. Not only is this a book I highly respect, but one of its themes is perhaps more relevant than ever today, some six years after its publication.

Review Of On The End Of Privacy: Dissolving Boundaries In A Screen- Centric World By Richard E. Miller, Kandace Knudson

The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning

Although I no longer grade student papers, I work closely with students and my faculty colleagues in support of the online learning environment. Need some advice about how to design your online course to increase student engagement? Need to know what the institution’s rules are as they relate to online teaching? Yes, I’m that person: accessibility laws, copyright laws, college policy, how to get this photocopied article into the learning management system, where to click to do this or that.

"I Am Not Alone": Supporting Teachers Of Color Through Affinity Groups, Marissa J. White

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

While research has indicated that teachers of color need to be better supported by building and district administrators to retain higher numbers, the literature lacks the best practices for targeted support specifically for teachers of color. This Improvement Science Dissertation in Practice utilizes a qualitative participatory social justice design to examine the efficacy of affinity groups as a viable practice to support and retain teachers of color. Through a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework, this study also explores the reflections of teachers of color at a Pre-k – Grade 5 school in a large urban district in a Northeastern state. …

Linguistic Awareness And Dyslexia Beliefs Among Teachers Of Students Who Are Blind Or Visually Impaired., Nosheen Gul, Lindsay N. Harris, Alicia Larouech, Gracie Strohm

CISLL Publications

US students who are blind or have visual impairments do not read at the level of a third-grader with typical sight until, on average, halfway through the seventh grade. As a first step toward narrowing that gap, we investigated levels of linguistic awareness among teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired (TSBVIs) because research with general education teachers has demonstrated a link between teacher linguistic awareness and student literacy outcomes. We also examined the accuracy of dyslexia beliefs among TSBVIs and whether TSBVI linguistic aware- ness and dyslexia beliefs are associated with training and experience variables. A survey …

Special Needs Assistants In Primary Schools: An Investigation Of The Role, Function, And Expectations Of This Post In Ireland, Imaobong Maria Essien

Theses

This study aims to examine the role and function of the Special Needs Assistant (SNA) in Irish Primary Schools. The minimum requirement for a Special Needs Assistant (SNA) is three grade Ds in the Junior Certificate or an equivalent qualification. Existing research suggests that the role lacks clarity and has evolved to include taking on administrative, pedagogical, behavioral management, and therapeutic roles (INTO, 2017; Butler and Quinn, 2014; NCSE, 2011). This study explores the disparity between the SNA job descriptor to recognise the impact and importance of the SNA’s role in the education system. This study is underpinned by the …

Developing Self-Efficacy In Mathematics Through Visual Art: An Observational Research Report On A Preschool Child With Exceptionalities, Ever Daw-Powers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Self-efficacy is a skill that can inspire problem solving, high confidence, and critical thinking skills. As educators seek to create an enriching, inclusive, and engaging academic environment for students with disabilities, it is important to incorporate strategies for building self-efficacy throughout learning. I pose a potential solution to integrate self-efficacy building into mathematical concepts through visual art. The participant in this study is a four-year-old child diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), sensory input issues, and a developmental delay. Over a four-week period, I performed a pre-assessment, four lesson plans, and a post-assessment. I created the assessment to measure …

School Library Resources For Inclusive Online English Language Learning: Teachers’ Perspectives About Differentiating Instruction In The Context Of English As Second Language, Angela Eze, Charity N. Onyishi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

In an inclusive education setting, learners with and without disabilities are guided to study in the same classrooms with adaptable facilities and equipments. With this arrangement in place, assistive technology becomes an absolute requirement, and the school library is a medium for providing and using inclusive resources. In the current education system where online learning is speedily overtaking face-to-face learning modalities, school Library resources are indispensable for the effective inclusion of all learners through differentiated instruction. Such is critically essential for English language learning, especially in Nigeria, where English is learned as a Second Language. However, little is known …

Disappearing Acts: The Declining Numbers Of African American Teachers In Public School Settings, Catherine F. Lewis-Brownfield

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

African American teachers are slowly leaving the classroom, causing an imbalance in the student/teacher ratio (NCES, 2019). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, African American teachers make up 3% in California and 7% nationally. This study sought to understand the reasons for the decline in the number of African American teachers in public school settings. Due to the decline in their numbers, African American students have suffered high dropout rates, low standardized test scores, and low college attendance (Gershenson, Hart, Hyman, Lindsey, & Papageorge, 2017). This qualitative study examined the obstacles current African American teachers face and the …