Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

¿Un Paso Adelante? The Politics Of Bilingual Education, Latino Student Accommodation, And School District Management In Southern Appalachia, Edmund T. Hamann

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

Latino educational policy. More specifically, it describes how a broad but vague consensus regarding the goals of a novel binational partnership hid the differences in various partners' interests and understandings. Looking at both a Georgia superintendent's initial letter to his prospective partners at a Mexican university and then at the experiences of a Mexican university-affiliated bilingual education coordinator, the chapter highlights the interface between culture, policy, and power, illuminating how and why only certain portions of the formal binational accord were enacted and then only in certain ways. The chapter describes the political posturing, advocacy, and maneuvering that shaped the …

"We're From The State And We're Here To Help": State-Level Innovations In Support Of High School Improvement, Edmund T. Hamann, Brett Lane

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

As any good Maine educator knows, the idea in the title of this paper, that "we're from the state and we're here to help" is an oxymoron. In a part of the United States that defiantly prides itself on perpetuating traditions like town meetings and other versions of direct or almost-direct democracy, being told what to do by someone else, particularly by someone pulling rank, is viewed skeptically-- to put it mildly (Ruff, Smith, & Miller, 2000). Yet on school visit after school visit, we heard a staffer of the Center for Inquiry on Secondary Education (CISE), which is centrally …

Technology Knowledge And Use: A Survey Of Science Educators, A. Louis Odom, John Settlage, Jon E. Pedersen

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

The purpose of this study was to determine the current state of technology use and know-how among members of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. A web-based survey site and an e-mail merge invited members to participate in the study. The survey examined the differences between current and desired levels of knowledge about using technology as an instructional tool, to support research, to enhance productivity in classroom applications, and to enhance data collection and analysis. Large mean differences about using technology as an instructional tool were found, including: (1) teaching students at a distance, (2) database applications, …

Collaborating To Study Science Teaching: A Case Study, Frank E. Crawley, Jon E. Pedersen

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

The purpose of this study was to form a science teacher and graduate-student researcher team in which its members engaged in a study of science teaching, and to examine the progress of the team's work through the creation of a case study. A graduate student and science teacher team was formed in one high school, and used collaborative action research methods to investigate students' learning in a general education biology course. As well, the action research project was used to examine the attempt of the research team (graduate student and teacher) to change instructional patterns in the teacher's classroom. Records …

Teaching Discourses: Science Teachers' Responses To The Voices Of Adolescent Girls, Gayle A. Buck

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

The purpose of this study was to provide an opportunity for science teachers to ‘listen’ to adolescent girls discuss their ideas and feelings about the contemporary structure of middle-level science education. The reflections of these teachers were then analyzed to capture how the teachers interpreted what adolescent girls had to say and the action that they will take in the classroom as a result of those interpretations. This qualitative study investigated 11 teachers and 51 Grade 7 and 8 girls from various states across the continental USA. The girls discussed such things as their favorite science topics, comfort level in …

Seeking Fragility’S Presence: The Power Of Aesthetic Play In Teaching And Learning, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

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

Aesthetic play requires all participants to remain faithful to the intricacies and intensities of human experience. Teachers and students continually improvised within relations, adapting, building, and changing meaning. The indeterminate nature of aesthetic play assumes teaching/learning is complex and individual. All involved are oriented toward a sensitivity to the many relations present in teaching/ learning situations and deliberately seek out fragility’s presence in order to honor the existing complexity and individuality. Eisner explains, “What is mediated through thought are qualities, what is managed in process are qualities, and what terminates at the end is a qualitative whole.” Discerning these qualitative …

Book Review: Children Of Immigration, Edmund T. Hamann

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

Children of Immigration is a highly readable and welcome addition to the study of contemporary immigration, particularly the experience of immigrant children in the United States. It thoroughly covers a range of immigrant-related issues from the salience of legal status, to the way immigration changes gender roles and parent/child relationships, to the bevy of psychological adjustments required by transnational relocation. The ongoing research of the Harvard Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Project, which the wife/husband co-authors codirect, provides one foundation for the book’s content, but a multidisciplinary and extensive list of research, plus popular media and more literary sources (such as …

What Constitutes Becoming Experienced In Teaching And Learning?, James C. Field, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

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

In this paper, we attempt to address one of the central questions for teachers and teaching: how is it that teachers are able to see and act appropriately in concrete circumstances? To do so, we examine the ontological meaning of experience in teacher education. The discussion is anchored in the concrete particulars of a grade 5 art lesson. Our intent is to show the dynamic processes involved in becoming experienced as a teacher and to draw connections between experience and practical wisdom (phronesis). Thus, we argue that phronesis is not so much a form of knowledge as it is dynamic …

Beliefs Of Science Teachers Toward The Teaching Of Science/Technological/Social Issues: Are We Addressing National Standards?, Jon E. Pedersen, Samuel Totten

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

As science educators, we must view the changing nature of society brought on by technology and the global nature of society as an impetus to reexamine the nature of science instruction. We have been bestowed with the responsibility to educate students on a variety of topics that less than two decades ago did not exist. Many of these social issues are controversial in nature and are directly linked to the local, regional, national, and global communities in which we exist. However, including these social issues in the extant curriculum of science has, at best, been limited. This is true even …

Exploring Alternative Conceptions In Our Environmental Education Classroom, Gayle A. Buck, Patricia Meduna

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

Teaching is an inexact science. Even experienced teachers have difficulty assessing the effectiveness of their lessons and students mastery of concept. Teachers must be particularly careful to avoid introducing or reinforcing student misconceptions. The following describes how we scrutinized and modified our own environmental education teaching practices to ensure that our students were learning what we were teaching. Our inquiry into students’ alternative conceptions about the environment was a very enlightening experience for both of us. Th e process revealed some beliefs that surprised us. However, the real surprise came when we realized that our own lessons reinforced (and sometimes …

Letting Aesthetic Experience Tell Its Own Tale: A Reminder, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

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

In my desire to trace further the meanings and traditions sedimented in the term aesthetic, inherited and being reconstructed, I am drawn to my knowings of the beach as a place to begin. I know aesthetic experience to be a disclosive dynamic revealing the fore-understandings that have shaped my way of seeing and being. I am a living embodiment of these structures. I know aesthetic experience to depend on this sense of placedness. It is an ongoing search for attunement that assumes and acknowledges the pres¬ence of cognitive, affective, and somatic dimensions. I turn to my own know¬ing of aesthetic …

School Portfolios, Critical Collegiality, And Comprehensive School Reform, Edmund T. Hamann, Brett Lane, Susan Hackett Johnson

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

Maine’s deployment of the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) program has been substantially different from that of other states. It has included the addition of several parameters and operating requirements that have made the school change process that was prompted by CSRD in that state particularly promising and worthy of study (Hamann et al., 2001). Maine’s adaptation of the CSRD framework has led to the adoption of school portfolios at 11 high schools. The state urged schools to adopt this measure in addition to focusing all of its comparatively modest CSRD allocation at the high school level and assuring further …

English Language Learners, The Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Project, And The Role Of State Departments Of Education, Edmund T. Hamann, Ivana Zuliani, Matthew Hudak

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

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
MAKING THE CASE THAT CSRD OVERLOOKS ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Methodology
Reviewing the data
What could be
ENDNOTES
REFERENCES
APPENDIX A: References to ELLs and/or to programs that serve ELLs in various states’ CSRD applications to the U.S. Department of Education (Connecticut , Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont )
APPENDIX B: References to ELLs and/or to programs that serve ELLs in federal CSRD guidelines to states
Federal Guidelines to States

Theorizing The Sojourner Student (With A Sketch Of Appropriate School Responsiveness), Edmund T. Hamann

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

In response to inadequate local resources (as subjectively defined) in both sending and receiving communities and in response to related local racial/ethnic discriminations, transnational families engage in transnational economic, cultural, and psychological risk-minimization strategies— the substance of a “transnationalism from below” (Smith and Guarnizo 1998)—that are discordant with the enculturative presumptions of schooling. A special type of transnational migrant described here—the sojourner student—is thus vulnerable not only to (a) the original migration-inducing conditions and (b) the limitations of opportunity in the receiving community, but also (c) to the contradictions between their response strategy and the standard suppositions of schooling. This …

High School Students' Perceptions Of Evolutionary Theory, C. Sheldon Woods, Lawrence C. Scharmann

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

If we are to be successful in teaching evolution, we must take into account our students' worldviews as well as their individual understandings and misconceptions. It is im-portant to know our students their cultures, personal his-tories, cognitive abilities, religious beliefs, [and] scientific misconceptions. [It is also important] to address directly the likely cultural/religious concerns with evolution and to do so early on so as to break down the barriers that keep many students from hearing what you say. (Smith, 1994, p. 591)

Smith penned these words for a special issue of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching which focused …

Validating The Draw-A-Science-Teacher-Test Checklist (Dastt-C): Exploring Mental Models And Teacher Beliefs, Julie A. Thomas, Jon E. Pedersen, Kevin Finson

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

The National Science Education Standards [National Research Council (NRC), 1996] encourage science learning as an active, inquiry-based activity that children do rather than something that is done to them. Following the explicit goal of the standards to establish scientific literacy for all, students are expected to participate in hands-on and minds-on learning experiences that reflect the intellectual traditions of contemporary science. Standards-based lessons involve children in inquiry-oriented investigations, help them to establish connections, encourage questions, promote problem solving, and support group discussions. In the words of the standards, "Emphasizing active science learning means shifting away from teachers presenting information and …

In Search Of Aesthetic Space: Delaying Intentionality In Teaching/Learning Situations, Margaret A. Macintyre Latta

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

Aesthetic considerations are qualitative, personal, and value laden and do not fi t well into existing educational frameworks. Yet, I think greater aesthetic awareness is a pragmatic and philosophical necessity missing in much schooling. An aesthetic context calls for a rethinking and revaluing of what is educationally important. Th is paper explores such possibilities along with the concrete implications of taking aesthetic considerations seriously, within a school setting. Opened in September, 1997, the Creative Arts Centre, Milton Williams School, Calgary Board of Education, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, has chosen to value the creating process, primary to the arts, within the school …

Csrd Roll-Out In Maine: Lessons From A Statewide Case Study, Edmund T. Hamann, Brett Lane, Matthew Hudak

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

Creating a Cohort of Like-Minded Schools to Implement Like-Minded Change
Methodology
Maine’s decision to tie together CSRD and Promising Futures
Implementing CSRD: Coherence, Collegiality, and Personalization
Lessons from non-funded schools
Conclusion
Endnotes
References
Appendix A: Our handout for the May 2000 Maine CSRD School Workshop
Appendix B: Overheads from the July 13, 2000 IAS Summer Meeting
Appendix C: Promising Futures’ 15 Core Practices
Appendix D: The “Continuum of Evidence” Guide for School Portfolios

The Education Of Migrant Children In Michigan: A Policy Analysis Report, Maria Teresa Tatto, Virginia Lundstrom-Ndibongo, Brenda E. Newman, Sally E. Nogle, Loukia K. Sarroub, James M. Weiler

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

Occasional Paper No. 72

The present report originated in a MSU policy analysis class taught during 1996. The professor and students agreed to construct a class that represented a grounded experience in policy analysis touching upon a current and relevant issue. We began exploring the policies surrounding the education of migrant children in Michigan.

Our goal was to learn about the policies related to the of education of migrant workers’ children and to develop an understanding of the issue’s complexities. We knew our work would be limited by time, financial, and political constraints. These constraints limited our work to an …

Teaching Science To English-As-Second-Language Learners: Teaching, Learning, And Assessment Strategies For Elementary Esl Students, Gayle A. Buck

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

The number of reported LEP students enrolled in public and nonpublic schools has been increasing since 1986. In 1997, 22 State Education Agencies (SEA) in the United States reported the percent age of LEP students increased more than 10 per cent, and nine SEAs reported increases of 25 percent or greater (Macias, 1998). Overall, the number of students who speak languages other than English at home increased by more than 68 percent in the past 10 years (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 1997). This article relates to the National Science Education Standards’ Teaching Standard B: Teachers of …

Lessons And Possibilities: Notes Regarding Csrd In Puerto Rico, Edmund T. Hamann, Pinette Pineiro, Brett Lane, Patti Smith

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

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
CONTEXT AND METHODOLOGY
MACRO-LESSONS REGARDING PUERTO RICAN CSRD IMPLEMENTATION
PUERTO RICO’S FOUR MODELS
REFLECTIONS ON THE LAB AND PRDOE CSRD EFFORTS WITH PUERTO RICAN EDUCATORS
CONCLUSION
For U.S. Department of Education
For Puerto Rico Department of Education
For LAB at Brown
ENDNOTES
REFERENCES
APPENDIX A: Materials brought back to the LAB (from second site visit)

Learning To Look Through The Eyes Of Our Students: Action Research As A Tool Of Inquiry, Joanne Arhar, Gayle A. Buck

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

The story we are about to tell occurred when Gayle was a middle school science teacher and graduate student in Joanne’s seminar on the study of teaching. Gayle was trying to make sense of her science students’ indifference toward the environment, an attitude that concerned her as an environmentalist. She turned her inquiry into an action research project that sought to answer the question, ‘What are the assumptions that my middle school students have about their relationship with the environment?’ Joanne was mentoring Gayle in her action research study, and at the same time exploring Gayle’s perspective as an action …

Anglo (Mis)Understandings Of Latino Newcomers: A North Georgia Case Study, Edmund T. Hamann

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

This paper examines how Anglos in a small north Georgia city imagined, or conceptualized, Hispanics during the late 1990s as thousands of Spanish-speaking immigrant newcomers transformed the community’s demography. Based on two years of ethnographic research, the paper outlines the local play of several macro-social dynamics, such as businesses’ externalization of indirect costs, the ethnic segmentation of the work force, the use of sojourner labor, and the role of mediating institutions. The paper uses these dynamics to explain the emergence and sustenance of what Suárez-Orozco (1998) calls the “pro-immigration” and “anti-immigration scripts” and illustrates how these can be used to …

Book Review - On The Border Of Opportunity: Education, Community, And Language At The U.S.–Mexico Line, Edmund T. Hamann

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

On the Border of Opportunity is a good, important, but limited book. Marleen Pugach describes the links between school and community that she, her two school-aged children, and a graduate assistant encountered during a seven-month stint in a New Mexico border town (pseudonymously called Havens). She extensively considers how binationalism was and could have been promoted in the local schools and how such promotion could distinguish the education on offer there. Pugach seems unsure whether to characterize Havens as an exemplary binational, inclusive community or whether to present a critique of Havens by chronicling what it could be but was …

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back: The Stormy History Of Reading Comprehension Assessment, Loukia K. Sarroub, P. David Pearson

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

After closely examining the recent history of reading comprehension assessment in the United States, we have concluded that although both the forms of assessment and the key players in the assessment process have changed in significant ways, the functions of assessment have remained relatively constant. In terms of function, we have always used, and continue to use, assessment tools to evaluate programs, to hold particular groups accountable for some specified set of outcomes (though it may seem that that is all we do these days), to inform instruction, either for individuals or whole classes, and finally, to determine who gains …

Assessment In Literature-Based Reading Programs: Have We Kept Our Promises?, Tanja Bisesi, Devon Brenner, Mary Mcvee, P. David Pearson, Loukia K. Sarroub

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

We have made incredible progress, both conceptually and practically, in the development of literacy assessment tools that appropriately reflect the goals and activities of literature-based reading programs. This progress, however, has not come without obstacles, many of which have not yet been (and may never be) fully negotiated. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the "promises" we as a literacy assessment community have made to ourselves, as we implement new forms of assessment for new purposes, and to critically evaluate our progress toward keeping those promises. We begin by briefly describing recent shifts in literacy …

Model Limitations, Randy Yerrick, Linda James, Jon E. Pedersen

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

SPACE EXPLORATION HAS SPAWNED MORE interest in science among teachers and students than any other topic in recent science education history, and teachers can use space science as an opportunity to encourage students to observe and make new discoveries for themselves. Many times, however, we run into obstacles. One trend we have noticed is that students can form misunderstandings based on simplistic explanations such as catchy astronomy activities on the back of cereal boxes, cartoon renderings of life on the Moon, or linear models in textbooks depicting the Solar System. These misrepresentations of science present problems for instructors.

Book Review - Moving Beyond Dichotomies To Outline Discourse Strategies In A Transnational Community, Edmund T. Hamann

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

Intended both for ethnographers and for scholars of literacy and rhetorical studies, Juan C. Guerra’s Close to Home: Oral and Literate Practices in a Transnational Mexicano Community is at once groundbreaking and important, though because of the sophistication and detail of its reasoning, it may not be accessible to a broad audience. The book—the fortieth title in the Teachers College Press Language and Literacy Series—is pioneering in a number of ways. Most notable is Guerra’s refusal to fit the group he is focusing on—the multigenerational social network of an extended Mexican-origin family—into a single geographic frame of reference. Guerra explains …

Nine Complementary Principles To Retain Adults In An Esol/Literacy Program, Edmund T. Hamann

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

The following list of principles is my attempt to share general recommendations to teachers of ESOL and/or limited literacy adults based on my specific practice running a bilingual family literacy program and confirmed by my more recent experience as a volunteer bilingual literacy teacher at the Asociación Latinoamericana (in Atlanta). Though I believe in bilingual classroom environments, I think the principles identified here are also pertinent to monolingual ESL environments.

When Portfolios Become Part Of The Grading Process: A Case Study In A Junior High Setting, Loukia K. Sarroub, P. David Pearson, Carmen Dykema, Randy Lloyd

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

Formal assessments have long served as our society's most privileged indices of student learning and school accountability. Hence, both learning and school effectiveness have often been equated with standardized test scores and/or grades. The privilege accorded to external assessment has tended to minimize the role of teachers and, even more dramatically, students in the assessment process. Assessments are external tools that are administered to teachers and students. For teachers, this often leads to a tension between their curricular goals and the assessment measures they must use in the classroom (Mitchell, 1992; Pearson, DeStefano, & Garcia, in press). Students are rarely …