Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Transforming The Classroom At Traditionally White Institutions To Make Black Lives Matter, Frank Truitt, Chayla Haynes, Saran Stewart

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In recent years, many college campuses across the United States witnessed a significant increase in campus activism regarding the range of experiences and conditions facing racially minoritized communities in higher education. As critical and inclusive pedagogues and scholars, we embrace the belief that a focus on making Black Lives Matter in the classrooms of traditionally White institutions (TWIs) provides educators with the best chance to improve the educational outcomes of all students. In this essay, we examine seven principles of critical and inclusive pedagogies that have the potential to make Black Lives Matter in TWI classrooms and identify several implications …

Workshopping A Workshop: Collaborative Design In Educational Development, Eleanor V. H. Vandegrift, Amy B. Mulnix, Jennifer R. Yates, S. Raj Chaudhury

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Working remotely and collaboratively, our interdisciplinary team created an educational development workshop, Thinking Skills for the 21st Century: Teaching for Transfer, in which participants not only experience, apply, and reflect on teaching across educational settings but also connect this work to principles that have been demonstrated by learning science to support the transfer of knowledge. We used backward design to develop the workshop and evidence-based pedagogies in its implementation. We facilitated the workshop at two different national meetings for distinct audiences and also as part of an on-campus faculty development program. Here, we report on the workshop development and revision, …

Nutr 250: Human Nutrition And Metabolism-A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Karsten Koehler

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

The purpose of this portfolio was to purposefully introduce and evaluate activities that are aimed at improving student learning and performance in NUTR250 – Human Metabolism, a large lecture-based 200-level course. Activities were designed to improve class preparation and ascertain student learning beyond exams (objective 1), provide time to review class material (objective 2), balance material related to concepts and knowledge (objective 3), and assess the effectiveness of activities (objective 4). To address objective 1, students completed weekly prequizzes, which improved student reading and preparation prior to class in approximately 2 out of 3 students. On average, students spend 33±27 …

A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio: Larc 497/597: Waste Ecologies, Catherine De Almeida

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This teaching portfolio presents a summary of my teaching efforts, course objectives, outcomes, and student learning for the first offering of the course LARC 497/597: Waste Ecologies. As a new professional elective course open to all upper level undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Spring 2018, participating in the Peer Review of Teaching program enabled me to develop the course through backwards design by matching course objectives with specific assignments and exercises that tracked student learning. Although this marked the first time teaching this course, it integrates my research trajectory of designing with waste. The Peer …

Navigating Authoritative Discourses In A Multilingual Classroom: Conversations With Policy And Practice, Lydiah Kananu Kiramba, Violet J. Harris

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

Using Bakhtinian concepts of persuasive and authoritative discourse, this study reports on science and English language arts instructional practices in a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya. Situated in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) and through the use of case study, the study explores classroom discourse data to illustrate how teachers use instructional practices to reproduce, contest, or navigate prevailing institutional monolingual policies when mediating students’ access to literacy and content. By analyzing classroom discourse, the authors argue that restrictive language policies that aspire for fixity disconnect multilingual learners from their daily realities. In contrast, they call for …

Special Issue Of Tej: What Is To Be Done With Curriculum And Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research On Conscientizing Preservice And In-Service Teachers, James C. Jupp, Ann Mogush Mason, Theodorea Regina Berry, Amanda Morales

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

In this essay, we provide a brief introductory statement to the special issue of Teaching Education titled What is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers. In our introductory statement, we describe the specific aim and broad purposes of the special issue and characterize its contents. Our specific aim with the special issue is to advance the conscientization of preservice and in-service teachers via critical pedagogies and race-based epistemologies. Our broad purposes are to (a) resist the ascendant, whitened, and Eurocentric fascism via our collective pedagogical …

What Is To Be Done With Curriculum And Educational Foundations' Critical Knowledges? Toward Critical And Decolonizing Education Sciences, James C. Jupp, Theodorea Regina Berry, Amanda Morales, Ann Mogush Mason

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

As editors of the special issue in Teaching Education titled What Is To Be Done with Curriculum and Educational Foundations’ Critical Knowledges? New Qualitative Research on Conscientizing Preservice and In-Service Teachers, our purpose with this conceptual essay is twofold. First, we historicize and characterize the critical knowledges deployed in this special issue as a broad array of criticalities. Second, we provide a reading of these criticalities that together we tentatively call critical and decolonizing education sciences. In our discussion and conclusion, we focus on the dual challenges of developing work in critical and decolonizing education sciences: (a) …

English Education As Democratic Armor: Responding Programmatically To Our Political Work, Lauren Gatti, Jessica E. Masterson, Robert Brooke, Rachael W. Shah, Sarah Thomas

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

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which attention to programmatic vision and coherence – rather than foci on individual courses – might advance the work of justice-oriented, critical English education in important ways. The authors propose that consciously attending to the work of English education on the programmatic level can better enable English educators to cultivate democracy-sustaining dispositions in preservice teachers. Using Grossman et al.’s (2008) definition of “programmatic coherence”, the authors illustrate how one interdepartmental partnership is working to create a shared programmatic vision for English education.

Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on …

Problems Of Practice As Stance, Edmund T. Hamann, Guy Trainin

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

This piece describes a steadily changing, teacher leadership-oriented, CPED-affiliated, education doctorate (EdD) program that is housed in a department of curriculum and instruction. It situates the program design in relation to four key concepts—epistemology, praxis, efficacy, and iterative processes—while highlighting CPED’s core stance that the voice of the professional practitioner needs to be inserted into discussion of educational change, not as the target of policy, nor the object of research, but rather as a coequal partner in a research/policy/ practice triad in which practitioner insights related to context are key for the viability of educational efforts.

What Does An Anthropologist Of Educational Policy Do? Methodological Considerations, Edmund T. Hamann, Thirusellvan Vandeyar

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

Although Margaret Mead (Hughes, 1952; Mead, 1961), Manuel Gamio (1916), and other leaders of 20th-century anthropology often made pronouncements regarding what schooling should and shouldn't do-in essence proposing to be educational policymakers of a sort-the turn of anthropology to the study of policy and particularly education policy is relatively new (Shore & Wright, 1997). It follows that what an anthropologist of educational policy implementation should do is therefore not yet depicted all that clearly or in detail. The groundbreaking work of Sutton and Levinson (2001) and their contributing authors in some senses stands out as an important exception to that …

Sources Of Science Teaching Self-Efficacy For Preservice Elementary Teachers In Science Content Courses, Deepika Menon, Troy D. Sadler

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

Self-efficacy beliefs play a major role in determining teachers’ science teaching practices and have been a topic of great interest in the area of preservice science teacher education. This qualitative study investigated factors that influenced preservice elementary teachers’ science teaching self-efficacy beliefs in a physical science content course. The primary data sources included Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument-B (STEBI-B) responses, two semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and artifacts. Analysis of STEBI-B data was used to select 18 participants with varying levels of self-efficacy beliefs: low, medium, and high. Four categories representing course-related factors contributing towards participants’ science teaching self-efficacy beliefs were …

European Spaces And The Roma: Denaturalizing The Naturalized In Online Reader Comments, Theresa Catalano, Grace E. Fielder

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

With the entry of several Eastern European nations into the European Union (EU), a “third” space has developed in the discourse for nations perceived as not fully integrated “inside” the EU system. This article investigates the construction of this “third space” in the resultant “moral panic” about undesired immigration from other EU countries and its potential drain on the social services of the United Kingdom and links it to Euroskeptic discourse in British media. The article uses construal operations from cognitive linguistics combined with critical discourse studies as a way of denaturalizing the discourse in online comments that focus on …

Developing Multilingual Pedagogies And Research Through Language Study And Reflection, Theresa Catalano, Madhur Shende, Emily K. Suh

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

Globalization and increased transnational migration underscore the need for educational responses to multilingualism and multilingual discourses. One way to heighten awareness of multilingual pedagogies (while simultaneously providing data for multilingual research) is the use of reflective language study and journaling by language educators/researchers. The purpose of this collaborative autoethnography, which focuses on the United States, is to demonstrate how this can be accomplished in language teacher education courses to help raise awareness and interest of how to capitalize on students’ linguistic and cultural resources. Data for this study included three participant/researcher journals and observational notes from collaborative discussions among researcher/participants …

Seeing Mathematics Through Different Eyes: An Equitable Approach To Use With Prospective Teachers, Christa Jackson, Cynthia E. Taylor, Kelley Buchheister

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Teacher educators need to prepare prospective teachers by encouraging them to critically examine their current beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics while also providing opportunities for prospective teachers to develop an equity-centered orientation. Attending to these practices in teacher preparation programs may help prospective teachers observe actions that occur in classrooms and determine effective strategies that provide the opportunity to enhance all students’ access to high-quality mathematics instruction. As mathematics teacher educators, we must recognize what prospective teachers attend to as they direct their attention to various classroom events and how they relate the events to broader principles …

Soci 101: Introduction To Sociology—A Peer Review Of Teaching Portfolio, Kelsy Burke

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This benchmark portfolio targets the Spring 2018 semester of SOCI 101: Introduction to Sociology, a large-enrollment course that combines lecture and recitation classes. It describes course objectives (my goals for the course); an overview of course content and a description of the students enrolled (the target audience); teaching methods (assignments and classroom activities); and assessment of student learning (analyzing quantitative and qualitative data of student performance). In order to evaluate course objectives and their relationship to teaching methods and student learning, I collected data from student feedback following each exam (a post-exam questionnaire). I then compared this feedback with assignment …

A Benchmark Portfolio Evaluating Sped 201: Introduction To Special Education, J. Marc Goodrich

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

No abstract provided.

Agri 115: Biotechnology – Food, Health And Environment, A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Leah Sandall

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

No abstract provided.

Course Portfolio For Math 407 Mathematics For High School Teaching: Refining Conceptual Understanding In A Mathematics Course For Pre-Service Teachers, Alexandra Seceleanu

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

My intention in this portfolio is to present my approach to teaching an upper-level mathematics course for pre-service secondary level mathematics teachers. Several teaching strategies are discussed in the context of designing a coherent approach to this course, which emphasizes the need for conceptual reasoning above all other goals. These strategies are evaluated and assessed in connection to the learning outcomes using samples of student work from the course.

Also presented are samples of course materials that were used to lead students through an organized discussion of the relevant concepts. These materials convey some basic mathematical knowledge and therefore may …

Sped 415/415a Reading And Writing Disabilities: A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Judith Wilson

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio explores four aspects of the lecture and practicum that comprise the coursework for students learning to tutor children with reading and writing disabilities. The first aspect is the alignment of the course objectives, teaching methods, assessments and scores. The second aspect is innovation in curricula for tutoring, explored through student response to surveys at the end of the tutoring session. The third aspect is student experience of participating in the course at mid-point and suggestions for improvement of course delivery, gathered by a mid-semester survey. The fourth aspect is topics and content students would like to see added …

Strategic Financial Management, Fina-475, Roberto Stein

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Strategic Financial Management is the new, case-based capstone course of the Finance Major at the UNL College of Business. Introduced in the Fall 2016 Term, it has since been revised and is being continually updated, to better achieve the its academic goals. In this portfolio, I describe the course’s overall structure, goals and main components. I then detail a number of changes made for the Spring 2018 version of the course, and proceed to analyze data pertaining to the outcomes observed from these changes. Finally, I outline potential strategies and further changes that might be implemented in future iterations of …

A Digital Class For An In-Person Discipline: Creating An Online Class For Introduction To Theatre, Ian Borden

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

No abstract provided.

Aecn 376-Rural Community Economics: Engaging Students In Learning, Daniela M. Mattos

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

AECN376-Rural Community Economics attracts students with different economics background and interests. In the three previous years I taught this course I was struggling to find a balance in class activities to make the course more engaging and effective to all students. The usual method of delivery is lecture along with PowerPoint slides. While this is the dominant form of pedagogy, particularly in higher education (Harvard Magazine 2015, Time Magazine 2012), an increasing amount of research indicates that the somewhat passive learning environment of the lecture does not reach all students with the same efficiency. In creating this portfolio, my goals …

Aecn 141- Introduction To The Economics Of Agriculture, Timothy Meyer

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Course portfolio for AECN 141- Introduction to the Economics of Agriculture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Fren 302: Representative Authors Ii-A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio, Julia Frengs

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio traces the process of the design, teaching methods, and assessment tools I used in my first time teaching a survey of French literature course, FREN 302, or “Representative Authors II.” The primary goal of the course is to introduce students to “masterpieces” of French literature spanning from the Middle Ages to the present. The course is certified for the ACE 5 outcome, which emphasizes the use of analysis and interpretation. My own principal objective for the course, developing student autonomy and critical thinking skills, which intersects with this ACE 5 outcome, is the main focus of this study. …

Adpr 333-001: Design And Layout--A Peer Review Of Teaching Portfolio, Octavio Kano-Galvan

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

No abstract provided.

Mucp 183-983: Applied Music Composition--A Course Benchmark Portfolio, Gregory Simon

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

MUCP 183-983, Applied Music Composition, is the core of the music composition course curriculum for students at all levels, from freshman to doctoral candidate. Like all applied lesson environments, it is a one-on-one, individualized study that principally involves the instructor giving students feedback on their musical works-in-progress. This time-honored paradigm for teaching composition has produced brilliant artists, but is rife with pitfalls and traps that can tarnish a student’s growth: composition pedagogues can coerce students into writing music like their teachers, or can prescribe a curriculum that makes composition accessible only to students who have already played classical music for …

Edps 951: Academic And Behavior Assessment--A Peer Review Of Teaching Benchmark Portfolio, Scott A. Napolitano

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

No abstract provided.

Cyaf374: Purposeful Planning—Reflection And Practice In Enriching Students’ Lesson Design, Kelley Buchheister

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio documents my process of embracing, modeling, and implementing reflective teaching practices to enhance the lesson designs of my prospective early childhood professionals in CYAF374: Curriculum Planning in Early Childhood. Throughout this project I attended to and applied five critical components emphasized in the peer review of teaching project and integrated these ideas within the foundational elements of Japanese lesson study in order to implement instructional practices that would benefit my students. These five elements are extensively discussed throughout the portfolio on multiple levels: (a) understanding the role of reflective practice, (b) identifying goals through backward design, (c) outlining …

Ethn 201: Introduction To Native American Studies--A Benchmark Portfolio, Margaret Huettl

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio traces the process of the design, teaching methods, and assessment tools I used in reconfiguring ETHN 201: Introduction to Native American Studies. “Introduction to Native American Studies” (INAS) is an introductory survey course taken either as an elective or as the foundation of a Native Studies minor. The class size is relatively small, capped at twenty-four students. Students who take this course come from a broad cross-section of disciplines in the College of Arts and Sciences and beyond, although perhaps the greatest portion comes from the Humanities. The course serves as an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of …

Benchmark Portfolio For Soft 261: Software Engineering Iv, Suzette Person

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This benchmark portfolio documents the course objectives, teaching strategies, and assessments for the inaugural offering of SOFT 261: Software Engineering IV at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). This is the final course in the core sequence of software engineering courses taken by students in the new undergraduate program in software engineering at UNL. These courses teach fundamental computer science concepts in the broader context of engineering software. As an ACE (Achievement-Centered Education) 2 course, the instructional material in SOFT 261 is focused on teaching visual communications skills in the context of applying software engineering processes to a real-world software project. …