Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

A Call For A New Geoscience Education Research Agenda, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Dale R. Baker

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

A lack of qualified teachers and low enrollment in the geosciences exist at both secondary and tertiary levels in the United States. Consequently, it is unlikely that students will be able to achieve scientific literacy without an increase in both of these populations. To address these problems, we pose research questions, highlight sociocultural theories, and provide examples of other science education research as possible avenues by which to explore these related problems. We argue that such research studies are necessary to inform science education policy and advance national scientific literacy.

Teacher Learning By Script, Jenelle Reeves

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

Scripted instruction (SI) programs, which direct teachers to teach, even to talk, from a standardized written script, are roundly criticized for inhibiting teacher creativity and teacher learning. In fact, such programs utilize scripting for exactly that reason: to reduce teacher interference with (and presumed weakening of) the prescribed curriculum and its delivery. Yet, two teachers in this 18-month study reported learning much about language and language teaching from scripted instruction programs. Through a sociocultural lens, this article explores how an instructional program so widely decried as de-professionalizing instead became a catalyst for these teachers’ professional growth. Exploring the teachers’ reasoning …

Supporting Muslim Students In Secular Public Schools, Candace Schlein, Elaine Chan

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

This article discusses the findings of a study examining the challenges and opportunities of supporting Muslim students in secular public schools. Education is explored as a multifaceted interplay between home and family life, community resources, school programs and policies, and classroom lessons to investigate the curricular experiences of Muslim students in North America. In particular, this study focuses on data gathered through interviews, informal conversations, and participant observations to draw a narrative case study of a female, Bangladeshi, Muslim student attending a comprehensive elementary and middle school. The study explores tensions and growth among this Muslim student, her parent, and …

Teacher Education For Social Justice: What’S Pupil Learning Got To Do With It?, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Ann Marie Gleeson, Kara Mitchell

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

There are many controversies related to the increasingly widespread theme of “social justice” in teacher education, including debates about whether and/or how promoting pupils’ learning is part of this theme. This article briefly discusses the concept of teacher education for social justice in terms of pupils’ learning and then considers this notion in terms of the current press to hold teacher education accountable for learning. The article then presents the results of the “Teacher Assessment/Pupil Learning” (TAPL) study, an analysis nested inside a larger qualitative study about learning to teach over time in a preparation program with a stated social …

Discontinuities And Differences Among Muslim Arab-Americans: Making It At Home And School, Loukia K. Sarroub

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

Cohen and Neufeld (1981) have remarked that schools are a great theater in which conflicts of culture get played out. The same can be said about homes and families in relation to schools. In fact, scholars and educators have attempted to understand, define, and refine the parameters and connections that bind schools and homes together. In this chapter, I explore the ways in which students’ success at home and school has been conceptualized in scholarly literature, and then connect this literature to the lives of Arab-American youth and their families. The underlying premise undergirding the ideas in this chapter is …

Finding Husbands, Finding Wives: How Being Literate Creates Crisis, Loukia K. Sarroub

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

Literacy and immigration scholars have not considered how refugees and immigrants negotiate the subtle and important connections between marriage, literacy, and migration to the United States. This chapter attempts to move these understudied connections to the forefront and does so by examining the ways in which young Iraqi and Yemeni immigrant and refugee women and men strive to become literate and simultaneously search for husbands and wives. Investigating these social connections involved in finding the appropriate spouse inevitably brings researchers to the field of education, as those young immigrants considered find themselves in a crisis that brings educational, economic, political, …

Education In The New Latino Diaspora, Edmund T. Hamann, Linda Harklau

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

In 2002 Hamann, Wortham, and Murillo noted that many U.S. states were hosting significant and often rapidly growing Latino populations for the first time and that these changes had multiple implications for formal schooling as well as out-of-school learning processes. They speculated about whether Latinos were encountering the same, often disappointing, educational fates in communities where their presence was unprecedented as in areas with a longstanding Latino presence. Only tentative conclusions could be provided at that time since the dynamics referenced were frequently novel and in flux.

In this chapter we revisit their inquiry in light of six subsequent years …

Redirecting The Teacher's Gaze: Teacher Education, Youth Surveillance And The School-To-Prison Pipeline, John Raible, Jason G. Irizarry

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

This article addresses an apparent contradiction in American teacher education that results in conflicting goals for educators. It asks: How do we prepare teachers to interrogate their inherited professional roles in the surveillance and disciplining of youth? How might teacher education inspire pre-service teachers to care more about youth who belong to populations that have been deemed "undesirable" and expendable? We critically examine the role of teacher education in contributing to the criminalization of certain youth in urban communities and the resulting school-to-prison pipeline crisis that leads too many students from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse.

Guía Didáctica: Alumnos Transnacionales. Escuelas Mexicanas Frente A La Globalización, Juan Sánchez García, Victor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann, Ilian Dorantes Bollain Y Goytia, Marcela Castellanos Soto, María Gabriela Martínez Kalifa, Nancy Ayala De León

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

This teachers guide is directed at Mexican educators and professional developers to help them use “Alumnos Transnacionales: Escuelas Mexicanas Frente a La Globalización” (Zúñiga, Hamann, & Sánchez Garcia, 2008) to build teachers’ capacities to meet the needs of transnationally-mobile students (i.e., students with experience in both US and Mexican schools).

Esta Guía Didáctica tiene como propósito brindar sugerencias y estrategias didácticas para el desarrollo del libro Alumnos transnacionales. Escuelas Mexicanas frente a la Globalización (Zúñiga, Hamann y Sánchez, 2008). Este libro es un producto de la investigación: Migración internacional, trayectorias escolares y pobreza: inclusión/exclusión en las escuelas mexicanas y transnacionalismo …

Cognitive Conflict And Situational Interest As Factors Influencing Conceptual Change, Hunsik Kang, Lawrence C. Scharmann, Sukjin Kang, Taehee Noh

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

In this study, we investigated the relationships among cognitive conflict and situational interest induced by a discrepant event, attention and effort allocated to learning, and conceptual change in learning the concept of density. Subjects were 183 seventh graders from six middle schools in Seoul, Korea. A preconception test, a test of responses to a dis-crepant event, and a questionnaire of situational interest were administered as pretests. Computer-assisted instruction was then provided to the students as a conceptual change in-tervention. Questionnaires regarding attention and effort, and a conception test were admin-istered as posttests. The conception test was administered once more as …

Barriers And Bridges To Success: Factors For Retention Of Nontraditional Mexican American Students In Teacher Education, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke, Amanda Morales, Cindi Dunn, Gayla Lohfink, Pedro Espinoza

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

This paper discusses the findings of a qualitative, microethnographic case study of 15 nontraditional, Mexican American students as they completed their coursework in a 2+2 teacher education program in the Midwest. The theoretical frameworks that serve as the basis of this study are Tinto’s Model of Student Integration (Tinto, 1975, 1993), Bean’s attrition model (1980), and von Destinon’s empowerment model (1988). This integrated framework is an inclusive adaptation as it addresses the complex interaction among first-generation, Mexican American students’ backgrounds, geographical locations, and the institutions that serve them. The researchers identify characteristics of those students who persisted on to graduation, …

The Communication In Science Inquiry Project (Cisip): A Project To Enhance Scientific Literacy Through The Creation Of Science Classroom Discourse Communities, Dale R. Baker, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Senay Purzer, Nievita Bueno Watts, Gita Perkins, Sibel Uysal, Sissy Wong, Rachelle Beard, Michael Lang

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

This study reports on the context and impact of the Communication in Science Inquiry Project (CISIP) professional development to promote teachers’ and students’ scientific literacy through the creation of science classroom discourse communities. The theoretical underpinnings of the professional development model are presented and key professional development activities are described. Data are provided on teachers’ fidelity of implementation of the CISIP instructional strategies, their understanding of the nature of science communication, and their ability to write scientific investigation reports. Student data includes an analysis of scientific arguments and the perception of their classroom as a science classroom discourse community. Two …

Sojourners In Mexico With U.S. School Experience: A New Taxonomy For Transnational Students, Víctor Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann

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

There are many school-age children involved in the transnational movement of peoples between the United States and Mexico. Among those currently in Mexico (typically regarded as a sending country rather than a receiving country), most expect to return to the United States someday, although not necessarily permanently, and they variously identify as Mexican, Mexican American, or American. This suggests that the prospect of enduring geographic mobility affects the complicated work of identity formation and affiliation. Central to this negotiation are Mexican schools, which, like U.S. schools, are not deliberately designed to consider the needs, understandings, and wants of an increasingly …

Teacher Investment In Learner Identity, Jenelle Reeves

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

From a sociocultural perspective, teacher identity is constructed in relation to others, including other teachers and students. Drawing on positioning theory and the concept of investment, this study analyzed the case of a secondary English teacher who negotiated his teacher identity in relation to English language learners (ELLs). Findings indicated that the teacher made an investment in ELLs’ identity by positioning them as like any other student. The desired return on the teacher’s investment was a strengthened self-positioning as a natural and highly competent teacher. The implications of teacher investment in learner identity for teacher practice, learner identity construction, and …

A Sociocultural Perspective On Esol Teachers’ Linguistic Knowledge For Teaching, Jenelle Reeves

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

Within a sociocultural frame, teacher knowledge finds its origin in the entirety of teachers’ lived experiences, not just those experiences within teacher preparation. Teachers’ biographies, including their experiences as language learners, shape their knowledge base for teaching English to speakers of other languages (ESOL). This study interrogates one element of that knowledge base: teachers’ linguistic knowledge for teaching. Cases studies of two early career ESOL teachers with similar language learner biographies, that of first language (L1) Center English speakers with limited second language (L2) learning experienee, provided insight into the ways participants’ language biographies informed their linguistic knowledge for teaching. …

Colorblind Nonaccommodative Denial: Implications For Teachers’ Meaning Perspectives Toward Their Mexican-American English Learners, Socorro Herrera, Amanda Morales

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

Many parts of the United States are facing an increasing number of immigrant students. Focusing on mostly White teachers at a junior high school, which enrolls predominantly Mexican immigrant students, Socorro Herrera and Amanda R. Morales examine these teachers’ belief system. The authors identify the perspective of colorblind nonaccommodative denial among these teachers. • What is a colorblind perspective? How does it affect everyday teaching practices? • How would teachers justify their not accommodating minority students? What are the educational consequences of nonaccommodation?

Improving the learning experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse Mexican-American students in the United States is a …

Living In The Space Between Participant And Researcher As A Narrative Inquirer: Examining Ethnic Identity Of Chinese Canadian Students As Conflicting Stories To Live By, Elaine Chan

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

Schooling experiences of 1st-generation Canadians interact with cultural experiences in their immigrant households to shape a sense of ethnic identity both as Canadians and as members of an ethnic community. This long-term, school-based narrative inquiry is an examination of ways in which expectations for academic performance and behavior by teachers and peers at school and immigrant parents at home contributed to shaping the ethnic identity of an immigrant Chinese student as conflicting stories to live by. A narrative approach revealed challenges of supporting immigrant students in North American schools and contributed to understanding of the nuances of multicultural education.

Escuelas Nacionales, Alumnos Transnacionales: La Migración México/Estados Unidos Como Fenómeno Escolar, Víctor A. Zúñiga, Edmund T. Hamann

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

El artículo presenta datos recientes sobre una dimensión de la migración internacional que ha sido poco estudiada: la migración escolar. Con información de dos muestras representativas de alumnos de primaria y secundaria de los estados de Nuevo León y Zacatecas, los autores advierten la importancia del fenómeno y describen las trayectorias escolares de los alumnos transnacionales. De manera particular, en este trabajo, se analizan los dilemas que se le presentan la institución escolar, tanto de México como de Estados Unidos. La concepción mono-nacional de la institución enfrenta una población escolar transnacional en el sentido de que ha sido educada en …

Standards Vs. 'Standard' Knowledge, Edmund T. Hamann

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

This chapter (one of 40 in the book "Everyday Antiracism", edited by Mica Pollock) matches the format of other entries in the book by providing direct, research-grounded advice for ways of reducing racism in American schools and reducing its damage for students. This chapter focuses on the de facto recognized skills of two English learners (ELLs) who were kept in an intermediate class because of their teacher's need to have their assistance as interpreters, but highlights how this linguistic competence actually de jure counted against these learners making their progress appear slower than it was.

Initial Impacts Of No Child Left Behind On Elementary Science Education, George Griffith,, Lawrence C. Scharmann

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

This research examines the impact of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act on elementary science education within a Midwestern state possessing strong national education measures. Elementary teachers (N = 164) responded to an online survey, which included both closed-ended and open-ended questions pertaining to science instruction and changes made in science instruction since the implementation of NCLB. More than half of these teachers indicated they have cut time from science instruction since NCLB became a law. The reason given for this decrease in science education was mainly the need to increase time for math and reading instruction.

Advice, Cautions, And Opportunities For The Teachers Of Binational Teachers: Learning From Teacher Training Experiences Of Georgia And Nebraska Teachers In Mexico, Edmund T. Hamann

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

With the rapid growth and geographic spread of Mexican-origin student populations in the United States, the practice of U.S. teachers going to Mexico for travel study/professional development has become increasingly common. This paper considers what U.S teachers’ Mexican travel study experiences entail by looking at narratives from Nebraska and Georgia educators who made summer trips to Mexico to learn about Mexican education.

Accessing High-Quality Instructional Strategies, Edmund T. Hamann, Jenelle Reeves, Bradley Baurain, Graciela Valenciano

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

Superintendent O'Connell's 2007 call for greater public attention to the racial achievement gap in education provides the backdrop for our report. This report is intended to provide research-grounded policy recommendations related to assuring all students access to high quality instruction. This includes describing what California teachers should be helped to do in California classrooms if these classrooms are to be rich and successful learning environments where students from the many backgrounds represented in the nation's largest system of schools are all to fare well academically.

Superintendent O'Connell has expressed particular concern with inequities in current practice and current outcomes, so …

Meeting The Needs Of Ells: Acknowledging The Schism Between Esl/Bilingual And Mainstream Teachers And Illustrating That Problem's Remedy, Edmund T. Hamann

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

Nationwide, education researchers, policy makers, and school reformers agree that the education of English language learners (ELLs) is an increasingly important issue as (1) more students in more districts fit in that category (Ruiz-de-Velasco, 2005; Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 1999; Wortham, Murillo & Hamann, 2002); as (2) they, in aggregate, continue to fare less well than most other student populations (August & Hakuta, 1997; Callahan & Gindara, 2004; NCES, 1997); and as (3) policy compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act holds their schools accountable for their cumulative average yearly progress (Abedi, 2005; Crawford, 2004). There is also an emerging …

Successful Schooling For Ells: Principles For Building Responsive Learning Environments, Maria Coady, Edmund T. Hamann, Margaret Harrington, Samboen Pho, Jane Yedlin

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

Guiding Questions

• What are the goals of schooling in general and for ELLS in particular?
• What roles do language and culture play in teaching, in learning, and in the assessment of learning?
• How do we measure the successfulness of schooling for ELLs?
• What factors besides the quality of classroom instruction impact the education of ELLs? How?
• In addition to research-based, age-appropriate literacy instruction, what more do ELLS need in order to develop good literacy skills?
• What is the importance of parental and community involvement in the education of ELLs?

While measurable academic gains in …

University Students’ Conceptualization And Interpretation Of Topographic Maps, Douglas Clark, Stephen Reynolds, Vivian Lemanowski, Thomas Stiles, Senay Yaşar-Purzer, Sian Proctor, Elizabeth B. Lewis, Charlotte Stromfors, James Corkins

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

This study investigates the strategies and assumptions that college students entering an introductory physical geology laboratory use to interpret topographic maps, and follows the progress of the students during the laboratory to analyze changes in those strategies and assumptions. To elicit students’ strategies and assumptions, we created and refined a topographic visualization test that was administered before and after instruction to 26 students during the first semester of the study and to 92 students during the second semester. To more deeply understand how students think about and conceptualize topographic maps, we focused on eight individual students who were interviewed about …

Living “Glocally” With Literacy Success In The Midwest, Loukia K. Sarroub

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

This article examines the concept of glocality as a way to better understand why immigrants, poor people, print-illiterate families, and boys are short-changed by schools that often operate under a deficit model or deprivation model in which students’ economic, language, and gender status is the main determinant for school success. The author offers for discussion a set of themes that address (a) the challenges of recent immigration and resettlement in the Midwestern region of the United States, (b) the concept of glocality in connection to youth literacies and transnationalism, (c) the Midwest as a glocal context, and (d) the implications …

Utilizing Peer Interactions To Promote Learning Through A Web-Based Peer Assessment System, Lan Li, Allen L. Steckelberg, Sribhagyam Srinivasan

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

Abstract: Peer assessment is an instructional strategy in which students evaluate each other’s performance for the purpose of improving learning. Despite its accepted use in higher education, researchers and educators have reported concerns such as students’ time on task, the impact of peer pressure on the accuracy of marking, and students’ lack of ability to make critical judgments about peers’ work. This study explored student perceptions of a web-based peer assessment system. Findings conclude that web-based peer assessment can be effective in minimizing peer pressure, reducing management workload, stimulating student interactions, and enhancing student understanding of marking criteria and critical …

Multicultural Education: Raj’S Story Using A Curricular Conceptual Lens Of The Particular, Vicki Ross, Elaine Chan

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

In this study, we employ a curricular conceptual lens of the particular to explore the experience of multicultural education from the perspective of an immigrant student, Raj. Using a school-based narrative inquiry approach, we learn about Raj’s experiences at the intersections of immigration and settlement, adaptation and assimilation, English-language acquisition, unemployment, poverty, family violence, and family relocation. We employ Dewey’s [(1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster] theory of experience, Connelly and Clandinin’s [(1988). Teachers as curriculum planners: Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia] understanding of curriculum as experience, and Schwab’s [(1969). The …

From Nuevo León To The Usa And Back Again: Transnational Students In Mexico, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor A. Zúñiga, Juan Sánchez Garcia

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

The movement of Mexicans to the United States is both longstanding and long studied and from that study we know that for many newcomers the attachment to the receiving community is fraught and tentative. The experience of immigrant children in U.S. schools is also relatively well studied and reveals challenges of intercultural communication as well as concurrent and contradictory features of welcome and unwelcome. What is less well known, in the study of migration generally and of transnational students in particular, is how students moving in a less common direction — from the U.S. to Mexico — experience that movement. …

Content Is Not Enough: A History Of Secondary Earth Science Teacher Preparation With Recommendations For Today, Elizabeth B. Lewis

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

Secondary geoscience education has its roots in geography and physiographic education from the turn of the 20th century. High school Earth science reached a peak during the late 1960s and 1970s, after plate tectonic theory revolutionized geology. The production of Earth science teachers, unlike biology teachers, has never reached full capacity, which has likely contributed to the lesser presence and status of Earth and space science in U.S. high schools today. Historically, the geoscience community has focused on enriching teachers' geoscience content knowledge, but modern Earth and space science teachers need more than just content knowledge.

Based on current science …