bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Research on Individual Differences within a Sociocultural Perspective: Co-regulation and Adaptive Learning
Authors: Mccaslin Mary , Burross Heidi Legg
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Research is presented on teacher-centered instruction and individual differences among students within a sociocultural perspective—specifically, within a co-regulation model.

Purpose of Study

To determine the utility of a co-regulation model for understanding teacher and student adaptation to the press of cultural and social demands for student achievement.

Research Design

Multiple methods were used and quantitative procedures applied to data obtained in Grades 3–5 classrooms (N = 47) in schools (N = 5) that primarily served students living in poverty and were engaged in comprehensive school reform. Data sources include observation of classroom practices (N = 108; mean = 2 observations per classroom) to identify differences in instructional opportunity within teacher-centered instruction; students’ (N = 439) reported self-monitoring of their classroom activity to ascertain individual differences among them in their adaptation to classroom demands; and student performance on classroom-like tasks (story writing; individual student unit of analysis) and standardized tests (SAT9 language, math, and reading subtests; grade-level unit of analysis) to illuminate the dynamics of opportunity, activity, and adaptation in student achievement.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Results support the potential of a co-regulation model to understand and enhance teacher-centered instruction of students who differ in adaptation to classroom demands and achievement expectations in nontrivial ways. The practicable instructional opportunities that most aligned with cultural demands for improving student performance on mandated tests was a basic form of direct instruction. Direct instruction appears to cast a wide safety net, including students who are and are not yet ready to profit from this mode of instruction as expressed by mandated test performance. Students not yet ready for culturally mandated performances are nonetheless acquiring desirable and personally meaningful adaptations to learning challenges that are co-regulated by direct instruction opportunities. Unfortunately, these students remain largely invisible to sociocultural policy makers who portray them as uninvested in, if not resistant to, school learning. It is reasonable to ask how long students will continue to participate in and adapt to classroom demands without cultural validation of that participation and recognition of the learners these students are and wish to become. It is time for deliberate examination of cultural beliefs and regulations that equate student performance on mandated tests with meaningful learning, a prepared future citizenry, and the effectiveness of the public school.
Identifying Program Characteristics for Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for Diversity
Authors: Akiba Motoko
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Educating pre-service teachers to develop multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills for teaching diverse students is a major responsibility of teacher education program coordinators and teacher educators. Numerous studies have discussed and explored the characteristics of teacher preparation that improve pre-service teachers’ competency to teach diverse students. However, only a few empirical studies have examined the relationship between preparation characteristics and pre-service teachers’ multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills.

Research Questions

The study answered two research questions: 1) How do the initial level and change in pre-service teachers’ beliefs about diversity in personal and professional contexts differ by their background characteristics? and 2) What characteristics of teacher preparation for diversity reported by pre-service teachers are associated with positive changes in their beliefs about diversity in personal and professional contexts, controlling for their background characteristics?

Participants

The participants were 243 pre-service teachers enrolled in eight sections in a diversity course and accompanied field experience component in a teacher education program in a Midwest Research I university.

Research Design

Pre- and post-surveys were conducted to examine: 1) pre-service teachers’ background characteristics (gender, socioeconomic status, class standing, hometown location, and prior exposure to diversity), 2) beliefs about diversity in personal and professional contexts, and 3) four characteristics of teacher preparation for diversity: classroom as a learning community; instructor modeling constructivist and culturally-responsive teaching; field experience for understanding diverse students; and opportunity for reflection.

Findings

The study found that three characteristics of teacher preparation for diversity reported by pre-service teachers: 1) classroom as a learning community, 2) instructor modeling constructivist and culturally-responsive teaching, and 3) field experience for understanding diverse students were significantly associated with positive changes in pre-service teachers’ beliefs about diversity in both personal and professional contexts.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Creating a sense of community in classrooms, and modeling constructivist and culturally responsive teaching are likely to promote positive beliefs about diversity among pre-service teachers. In addition, field experiences should promote pre-service teachers’ interactions with people from diverse backgrounds, assign a mentor to support their learning experience and promote self reflection, and provide opportunities to understand the connection with diversity coursework.
Two Decades of Generalizable Evidence on U.S. Instruction from National Surveys
Authors: Camburn Eric M. , Won Han Seong
Published: November 2021

Background

Students’ instructional experiences—that is, their experiences working with subject matter during classroom instruction—are a major determinant of how they learn. Given the importance of classroom instruction, valid, generalizable evidence is needed by policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. Over the past two decades, a wealth of generalizable evidence on instruction has been generated by large-scale surveys administered to nationally-representative probability samples. But this vast body of research has not been systematically summarized.

Purpose of the Study

This article attempts to fill a gap in the research by describing evidence on instruction from all surveys conducted between 1987 and 2005 that measured instruction using nationally-representative samples. Our goal is to generate a portrait of the evidence from these surveys that identifies strengths and gaps in the literature and that summarizes what this research base says about the relationship between classroom instruction and student outcomes.

Research Design

Evidence on instruction was compiled and summarized in four steps: (1) all surveys conducted between 1987 and 2005 that measured instruction and were administered to nationally representative probability samples were identified, (2) manuscripts using data from these surveys were selected for review, (3) the dimensions of instruction addressed by each manuscript and other manuscript characteristics were coded, and (4) the methodology and findings of each manuscript were summarized.

Findings

More than half the studies used data more than a decade old; few studies examined instruction during important transition years such as sixth and ninth grade; and subject area emphasis was lopsided, with mathematics and science instruction receiving much greater attention than English/language arts and social studies. The summary also revealed a repeated finding of low-SES students receiving diminished learning opportunities than more affluent peers. We also found repeated evidence of a positive association with student achievement for six dimensions of instruction, and repeated evidence of a negative or null association with achievement for five dimensions of instruction.

Conclusions

More research is needed on disparities in the instructional experiences of low-and high-income students. More research is also needed on instruction at key transition points and on instruction in English/language arts and social studies. This review also suggests a need for studies that more rigorously test research questions about instruction using measures that more authentically reflect the complexities of instruction and that examine student achievement growth over longer periods of time.
Democracy Now? Race, Education, and Black Self-Determination
Authors: Dixson Adrienne D.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The Supreme Court's June 2007 decision on the Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1 (PICS) provides an important context for school districts and educational policy makers as they consider the role of race in school assignment. The PICS decision has been described as essentially “undoing” the 1954 Supreme Court decision in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that ended de jure racial segregation.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Given the rhetoric that education in the United States is the “great equalizer,” this conceptual article considers how the PICS decisions impact notions of educational equity and self-determination for African Americans.

Research Design

This article provides a conceptual analysis of the PICS decision and educational equity.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The author recommends that despite the PICS decision, school administrators and policy makers continue to consider how race impacts school assignment to ensure that public schools are democratic institutions that are racially and educationally equitable.
Eco-Apartheid: Linking Environmental Health to Educational Outcomes
Authors: Akom Antwi
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The issue of how to achieve a racially diverse student population has become increasingly challenging since a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court split decision endorsed the importance of creating diverse schools, while simultaneously limiting the assignment to public schools based on an individual student's race or ethnicity. The article examines innovative efforts at achieving racial integration in Berkeley, California, as well as other district efforts in New York City, to curtail the dangers associated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in school building materials and develop plans to remediate contaminated school buildings.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

In this article, the author draws on the disciplines of environmental sociology, critical race theory, and social epidemiology to examine the relationship between school desegregation, environmental inequality, structural racialization, and health and educational outcomes. The author proposes a conceptual framework for linking environmental health to educational outcomes that considers the dynamic social processes through which social and environmental inequalities—and associated health and educational disparities—are produced, reproduced, and transformed.

Setting

Berkeley Unified School District has achieved substantial integration in a city where neighborhoods are polarized by racial-ethnic, socioeconomic status, and environmental inequality. Moreover, the Berkeley integration plan was upheld in 2009 by the state appellate court, a decision that the California Supreme Court allowed to stand. As a result, the Berkeley Unified School District's plan to maintain diversity could serve as a national model for other public schools that are seeking constitutionally sound desegregation programs.

Research Design

Using empirical evidence from the published literature, as well as the author's own practical experience conducting community-based participatory research in Berkeley, the author applies the eco-apartheid conceptual framework to the city of Berkeley.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The eco-apartheid framework provides a useful model for theory building in the study of environmental health and educational equity. Moreover, the author recommends that theories of racial and educational inequality in general would benefit from a more serious consideration of the role that environmental inequalities play in structuring the relationship between health and educational inequality. Additionally, the author highlights the ways in which existing research on desegregation remains in need of theoretical strength and methodological rigor with respect to environmental inequality.
An Invitation to Unknowing
Authors: Vasudevan Lalitha
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This essay is part of a special issue that emerged from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose was to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants came from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They brought to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, those with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. They also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

At a time when there is increased hybridity in local and global citizenship, language and literacy practices, and performances of cultural identity and affiliation, narrowing of our ways of knowing can detrimentally impact how educators and scholars engage in intellectual inquiry and educational practice. This essay uses the mode of questioning to create a dialogue about the discursive, rhetorical, and even physical postures that educators and scholars might embrace when re-imagining everyday practices of teaching, learning, and research to be open to unexpected trajectories. Questions are woven together with descriptive vignettes of films, excerpts from research studies, personal narratives, and reflective analyses that invoke texts from a wide range of scholarly traditions in order to propose unknowing as a stance through which to engage more fully with and be responsive to a changing world.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Unknowing is proffered as a stance and a lens through which to re-imagine practices associated with educational practice and research to be more open to new ways of knowing. Rather than offering definitive recommendations, this essay concludes with an invitation for the broader educational community, and especially institutions of education, to reclaim an ethos of inquiry and possibility in the daily acts of seeing, being, becoming, belonging, and storying through which knowing and knowledge are enacted.
Being across Homes
Authors: Hubard Olga
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth.

Purpose

My inquiry is driven by the following questions: How is our sense of self influenced by the place where we live? And what happens when our lives take place in two different homes, two cultures?

Research Design

I explore the guiding questions through the unique perspectives of three individuals whose lives straddle Mexico City and New York City. I share these perspectives as much for the ideas they embody as for the panderings they provoke. Thus, my reflections, often in the form of questions, are interwoven into the three accounts.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The three accounts and their juxtapositions make evident how the experience of being across cultures can be fraught with opposing experiences, with tensions and contradictions that are, in too many cases, unresolvable. The challenge, then, is not to try to eliminate the tension altogether, but to find ways to become more at home in a world of ambiguity and confusion.
Renaissance, Sharing, and Belonging: A Messy Language of Hope
Authors: Torres-Guzmán María E.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art education, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, language studies, philosophy of education, social studies, and technology. They bring to the table different scholarly frameworks drawn from the social sciences and humanities. They accepted invitations to participate because of their respective research interests, all of which touch on education in a globalized world. They were also intrigued by an all-too-rare opportunity to study in seminar conditions with colleagues from different fields, with whom they might otherwise never interact given the harried conditions of university life today. Participants found the seminar generative in terms of ideas about globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants also appreciated what, for them, became a novel and rich occasion for professional and personal growth.

Purpose/Objective

Torres-Guzman encourages the reader to consider globalization as a “renaissance” and to embark on the task of rescuing the debris left by modernity to construct a language of hope. Using the rescued concept of hybridity, she foreshadows what might be an intergenerational offering as she reflects on education as sharing and citizenship as belonging.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Torres-Guzman proposes that a fresh look at hybridity can render a rich concept for constructing resistance to conformity and uniformity, and for renewing a commitment to a multicultural, multilingual, egalitarian, ecologically-sound, and democratic world.
From “Liberal Professions” to “Lucrative Professions”: Bowdoin College, Stanford University, and the Civic Functions of Higher Education
Authors: Dorn Charles
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Over the past three decades, Americans’ conception of higher education has shifted from a public good to a private one. Wary of colleges and universities’ increasing commodification, proponents of higher education's civic engagement have responded with a reform agenda that, they argue, reflects an earlier era during which colleges and universities enthusiastically embraced wide-ranging public purposes. Using Bowdoin College and Stanford University as cases, this study investigates: (1) whether such an era ever existed, (2) how colleges and universities articulated and enacted their civic functions, (3) whether students’ reasons for pursuing higher education aligned with institutional priorities, and (4) how, if at all, those priorities influenced graduates’ career trajectories.

Purpose/Objective

Although their curricular programs differed greatly, Bowdoin College (founded in 1794) and Stanford University (established in 1885) sought to “qualify” students for “direct usefulness” in life. Nevertheless, these two institutions adopted contrasting civic functions, with Bowdoin officials emphasizing graduates’ “peculiar obligations” to exert their talents “for the public good” while Stanford University's founders asserted that the “object” of their university was “to qualify its students for personal success.” What led to this shift in higher education's central purpose?

Research Design

Historical analysis of two cases—Bowdoin College and Stanford University—during their founding decades.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study contends that during the early national period, America's social ethos was infused by preferences and attitudes that rewarded civic virtue and a commitment to the public good—what political theorists and historians have come to collectively call “republicanism.” By the late 19th century, however, political, economic, and social forces, including the rise of commercialism and the development of an urban, industrial, class-stratified society, refashioned this ethos into one that emphasized citizens’ personal advancement at least as much as the common good. As a result, colleges and universities’ institutional priorities, as well as students’ reasons for engaging in higher learning, changed over time.
Relationship Between “Form” and “Content” in Science Writing among English Language Learners
Authors: Lee Okhee , Penfield Randall D. , Buxton Cory A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

While different instructional approaches have been proposed to integrate academic content and English proficiency for English language learning (ELL) students, studies examining the magnitude of the relationship are non-existent. This study examined the relationship between the “form” (i.e., conventions, organization, and style/voice) and “content” (i.e., specific knowledge and understanding of science) of expository science writing among third grade ELL students in the beginning and at the end of each year during the three-year implementation of the intervention.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The study is part of a larger five-year research and development project aimed at improving science and literacy achievement of ELL students in urban elementary schools in a large school district.

Research Design

The intervention was comprised of curriculum units for students and teachers and professional development workshops for teachers throughout the school year. As a school-wide initiative, all third grade teachers and their students from six treatment schools participated. The study involved 683 third graders during the first year, 661 third graders during the second year, and 676 third graders during the third year. Approximately half of the students were Hispanic and the other half were Black, including Haitians and Caribbean Islanders. A writing sample was used as a measure of English proficiency and ability to explain science concepts in writing. At the beginning and end of each school year, teachers administered the writing prompt to their students. Data were analyzed using a hierarchical linear modeling approach.

Findings/Results

The results indicated significant relationships between writing form and content at both pretest and posttest, with a stronger relationship at posttest. The effect of English proficiency on the magnitude of the relationship was significant only at posttest, for which the relationship was stronger for non-ELL students. The results suggest that through our intervention over the course of the school year, students with greater English proficiency learned science content and developed English literacy simultaneously, whereas students with lower English proficiency did not show this simultaneous growth to the same degree.

Conclusions

Thus, interventions such as ours, which primarily present science curriculum and instruction in English, might be expected to have limited positive effects for ELL students at the beginning and intermediate levels of English proficiency. The results point out potential conflicts in current educational policies, including high-stakes testing and accountability and English-only policies, which affect ELL students.
Reclaiming Assessment through Accountability that is “Just Right”
Authors: Graue Elizabeth , Johnson Erica
Published: November 2021

Background

This article builds on three years of qualitative research on Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program, a class size reduction policy in Wisconsin.

Objective

In this article, we take a practice-oriented perspective on assessment, examining how assessments in schools that participated in a class size reduction program intersected with forces of accountability. The goal of this article is to broaden the understanding of what it means for schools and teachers to be held accountable for student learning and to discuss how different accountability frameworks affect instructional practices in classrooms.

Setting

The research took place in nine elementary schools across South and Central Wisconsin.

Research design

Data for the qualitative case studies were generated through multiple methods, including ethnographic observations, interviews, administration of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), document and artifact collection, and analyses of school-level standardized test scores.

Results

The current political and educational context oriented our focus to an intersection of issues: the implementation of class size reduction, instructional practice, assessment, and accountability. We identify three aspects of assessment practices that affect this intersection: alignment, audience, and action.

Conclusions

We found that coherent and collaborative assessment practices were more likely to take place in schools where there were explicit connections through assessments to varied communities of interest: district, school, teachers, students, and families. In supportive assessment systems, teachers had tools that they understood and that they could use to improve their practice to meet the needs of their students. In contrast, assessment in lower quality classrooms took place in disjointed systems that focused primarily on summative rather than formative assessment. A focus on accountability without attention to the quality of instruction and the quality of assessment resources is inherently flawed.
The Growth of Community Colleges in the American States: An Application of Count Models to Institutional Growth
Authors: Doyle William R. , Gorbunov Alexander V.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The establishment of community colleges in the American states stands as one of the most unique features of our system of postsecondary education. Four possible explanations have been suggested for the growth of community colleges. An economic perspective argues that the development of community colleges came about as a result of increased demand. The sociological perspective argues that these institutions were developed as a result of broader social forces. The political science literature focuses on the role of lobbying and constituent demands. The organizational ecology literature suggests that community colleges fill a unique niche.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

We seek to understand why certain states created large systems of community colleges, whereas other states developed few or none of these institutions.

Research Design

We test theories from the literature using a multilevel Poisson regression model, using Bayesian methods for estimation and inference.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data for this study come from a unique data set, compiled from a variety of sources of state-level data. The data cover all 50 states for the years 1969–2002. We estimate four models: a complete-pooling model with no unit-specific controls, a no-pooling model with controls for each state, a partial pooling model that allows state effects to vary, and a partial pooling model with a state-specific time trend.

Findings/Results

Our results indicate support for the idea that community colleges grew in response to changes in state populations and that states with a large number of other types of institutions of higher education saw slower growth. Little support is found for theories regarding community colleges as engines of stratification.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study provides support for the idea that the supply of higher education institutions is responsive to demand. Little support is found for the role of social stratification in the development of new institutions. Political forces do appear to play at least a small role in the expansion of institutions. Existing institutions may slow the growth of newer forms of postsecondary education.
Cultural Narcissism and Education Reform
Authors: Pajak Edward
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Scholars have described American culture in recent decades as narcissistic, manifested by displays of self-absorption tantamount to a pathological syndrome that has reached epidemic proportions. An education reform movement that is highly critical of public schools, teachers, and students has simultaneously emerged, espousing a wide array of seemingly disconnected innovations and punitive sanctions. Prior efforts to critically analyze these reform efforts have focused on the historical workings of power and knowledge by supporting reflective, emancipatory knowledge and action while overlooking the insights offered by psychoanalytic theory. Consequently, the impact of education policies on the identities of teachers and the personal relationships between teachers and students has not been thoroughly or sufficiently understood.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article represents a tentative step toward understanding the social and psychological underpinnings of education reform in the United States during the last quarter century. The reform movement is interpreted as being rooted in specific psychological processes associated with narcissistic parenting. Psychoanalytic concepts are employed to illustrate how educators and the general public have become accomplices in their own subjugation. A review of literature that addresses narcissistic parenting yielded eight characteristic behavioral patterns: expectations of perfection in children, particularly with regard to intellect; a grandiose sense of superiority and entitlement; relentless fault-finding; projection of personal fantasies onto children; an absence of empathy for children and their needs; a preoccupation with control; conditional approval; and a well-intentioned view of their own self-centered motives and insensitive actions as being beneficial for children. These conceptual formulations provided a basis for examining proposals and policies found in the National Commission on Excellence in Education's 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, and provisions of the more recent No Child Left Behind legislation.

Research Design

This analytic essay uses a review of the literature, including psychoanalytic research on narcissism and narcissistic parenting as well as contemporary critical theory related to education reform, to examine arguments and policies evidenced in A Nation at Risk and No Child Left Behind.

Conclusions/Recommendations

A prevailing “narcissistic education policy style” is posited, which denies the true learning needs of students; disempowers classroom teachers and schools by undermining trust in self and others; and reproduces narcissistic dynamics within the culture. Elements of an alternative education policy more focused on the needs of students are proposed, along with a call to recognize the right of children to be treated with the respect accorded to fully formed human beings.
Factors Related to Educational Resilience among Sudanese Unaccompanied Minors
Authors: Rana Meenal , Qin DesirÉe Baolian , Bates Laura , Luster Tom , Saltarelli Andrew
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Educational resilience is defined as having successful outcomes in school despite the adversities one has faced in life. There is a dearth of research on a particularly high-risk group—unaccompanied refugee minors who are separated from their parents by war and lack the protection and advocacy provided by adult caretakers.

Purpose

This qualitative study explores the factors associated with educational resilience among unaccompanied Sudanese refugee youth who experienced extreme trauma and chronic adversity prior to being placed with American foster families in 2000–2001.

Setting

The setting includes Lansing and neighboring communities in Michigan.

Participants

Nineteen Sudanese refugees (mean age—15 years at the time of resettlement; gender—17 males, 2 females) who had been placed in a foster care program for unaccompanied refugee minors in the United States participated in the retrospective interviews. We interviewed 20 parents from 15 families, including five couples, 3 married mothers interviewed alone, 2 single fathers, and 5 single mothers.

Research Design

The study used a qualitative research design by using open ended semi-structured interviews in which the participants were comfortable speaking about their experiences, yet the researchers were able to follow the interview protocol. With the assistance of the resettlement agency (Lutheran Social Services of Michigan), we sampled for diversity in the foster families to obtain a sample of youth who were exposed to diverse families and circumstances. With the help of foster parents and the assistance of a Sudanese cultural consultant, we recruited at least one youth from each of these families, with the exception of two families.

Data Analysis

The transcribed interviews were coded thematically. A three-step coding procedure was used: open, axial, and selective coding.

Findings

All youth in our study came to the United States with “education” as their primary goal. Many youth had a desire to help those left in Africa and to rebuild Sudan. All the youth interviewed had achieved at least a high school diploma, and all but three had either completed or were enrolled in higher education. Personal attributes, relationships, and community support/opportunities helped the youth in overcoming the challenges that they faced in terms of educational attainment in the United States.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study confirmed the important roles of parents, teachers, and school counselors in educational success for at-risk youth. The challenges noted by the youth and their foster parents provided useful information for possible changes in policy that could enhance their success.
Smartness as Property: A Critical Exploration of Intersections Between Whiteness and Disability Studies
Authors: Leonardo Zeus , Broderick Alicia A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Two scholars who each primarily identify as a scholar of Critical Race/Whiteness Studies and a scholar of Disability Studies, respectively, engage in this article in a purposeful dialogue that responds to the invitation put forth by Baglieri, Bejoian, Broderick, Connor, and Valle to engage with the construct of inclusive education, writ large. Through purposeful engagement with one another's discourse communities, the authors explore both the challenge and the tremendous promise of more theoretically integrated efforts toward abolishing ideological systems of oppression in schooling.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article explores “smartness” as an ideological system and particularly explores the ways in which it intersects with Whiteness as ideology. Using Cheryl Harris's analysis of Whiteness, the authors argue that smartness works as a form of property, with all the advantages that come with membership in the group.

Research Design

Analytic essay.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Analogous to Roediger's claim about Whiteness, the authors argue that smartness is nothing but false and oppressive, and as such, attempts to theoretically rearticulate or rehabilitate smartness may serve to illuminate, but ultimately fail to dissolve, the normative center of schooling.
School Finance and Courts: Does Reform Matter, and how Can We Tell?
Authors: Baker Bruce , Welner Kevin
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

School finance litigation has often prompted funding reforms, but what happens as a result is the subject of considerable dispute.

Purpose

This article explores design problems encountered in studies examining the nature and effects of those reforms.

Analysis

After describing the development and current status of school finance litigation, the authors explore methodological complexities associated with estimating the effects of state school finance reforms. Then, following a review of the research literature that provides the most direct and empirically rigorous evaluations of the achievement effects of these reforms, the authors critique a growing body of weaker but nonetheless influential literature focused on attacking school finance reform and more generally on discrediting judicial involvement in public schooling and finance litigation. In the article's final section, the authors review school finance reform in the four states analyzed in an influential recent book by Hanushek and Lindseth, taking a second look at what the book's authors concluded were disappointing outcomes.

Conclusions

Methodological complexities and design problems plague finance impact studies. Although there are high-quality studies covering these issues, the research appearing to have the greatest influence in media coverage and policymaking is often advocacy-oriented and of lesser quality.
Teacher Participation in Content-Focused Professional Development & the Role of State Policy
Authors: Phillips Kristie J. R. , Desimone Laura , Smith Thomas M.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Recent research has demonstrated the potential for teacher professional development to enhance teacher learning, improve instruction, and increase student achievement. Nevertheless, research examining the relationship between state and local policies and teachers’ participation in professional development is sparse. This connection between policy environments and teacher-based outcomes becomes increasingly important as educational reforms place new demands on teachers. Since professional development is a key mechanism to improving teachers’ instruction and students’ achievement, we address the extent to which state and school policy environments are associated with teachers’ participation in content-focused professional development. We consider such policy environments within the context of both mathematics, a high-stakes subject area, and science, currently a low-stakes subject area.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

In describing state policy environments along several dimensions, we seek to discover which types of policies are more or less influential in moving teachers into the types of professional development that research has shown to be most effective for improved teaching and learning.

Research Design

Using a national sample of high school mathematics and science teachers from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), we conduct a secondary analysis using a three-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) to predict teachers’ level of participation in different types of professional development. We conduct separate analyses for mathematics (a high-stakes subject area) and for science (currently a low-stakes subject area).

Findings/Results

We find that the policy context at both the school- and state-level is more predictive of teacher participation in effective professional development in a high-stakes subject (mathematics) than a low-stakes subject (science). We also find that the alignment between state standards and assessments is a key attribute of state-level policies that tend to promote teacher participation in content-focused professional development in high-stakes subject areas. Even though state-level policies are important in promoting participation in effective professional development, we find that policy environments are strongest when they are closest to the teacher.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We conclude that both state- and school-level policy environments are associated with teachers taking high-quality professional development, but these findings are most pronounced in high-stakes subject areas. We also find that policies promoting consistency in the form of alignment between standards and assessments are perhaps the most important type of policies that states can adopt to encourage teachers to participate in effective professional development.
Who Goes Early?: A Multi-Level Analysis of Enrolling via Early Action and Early Decision Admissions
Authors: Park Julie J. , Eagan M. Kevin
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Several studies have identified that applicants who apply to college via early admissions programs tend to be White and affluent. Because researchers have also identified benefits with applying early, akin to a 100 point boost on the SAT, such programs raise questions around equity in the college admissions process.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study/Research Design

We used cross-classified hierarchical generalized linear modeling to examine predictors of enrolling due to being admitted through an early decision or early action program in a national dataset of 88,086 students. Although research has investigated the types of institutions that tend to offer early action and early decision programs, the types of students who apply to these programs, and the types of high schools that they come from, no prior study has examined these three contexts simultaneously.

Findings/Results

When controlling for high school, individual, and institutional characteristics, receiving private college counseling was the strongest predictor of enrolling due to early admissions. We suggest that elevated levels of cultural capital help explain why White and affluent students are more likely to enroll via early admissions.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our findings indicate that early admissions programs, and in particular, early decision, perpetuate social privilege and stratification. At a minimum, institutions need to look inward and ask serious questions about the patterns of who applies and is accepted via early policies, and the implications of offering advantages to students who generally already are advantaged in the admissions process.
Analyzing the Teaching of Professional Practice
Authors: Moss Pamela A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Based on their case studies of preparation for professional practice in the clergy, teaching, and clinical psychology, Grossman and colleagues (2009) identified three key concepts for analyzing and comparing practice in professional education—representations, decomposition, and approximations—to support professional educators in learning from each other's practice. In this special issue, two teams of teacher educators (Kucan & Palincsar, and Boerst, Sleep, Ball, & Bass) put these concepts to work in representing their practice of preparing novice teachers to lead discussions with their students.

Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study

This analytic essay presents an argument for the importance of (a) adding a fourth key concept to the Grossman et al. framework—conceptions of quality—and (b) using these four concepts to trace novices’ learning opportunities as they unfold over time in order to serve the goal of facilitating instructive comparisons in professional education.

Research Design

In this analytic essay, I analyze the three articles to examine how conceptions of quality are already entailed in the characterizations of practice. My analysis focuses on the kinds of criteria or “qualities” that are foregrounded; the grain size of practice to which the conception of quality is applied; and the ways in which variations in criteria— what counts as more or less advanced—are represented. I then contrast the sequence of learning opportunities and assessments described in the articles on discussion leading in terms of these four concepts.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Even instructional practices that appeared quite similar when described through the lenses of approximations, decomposition, and representations looked quite different when conceptions of quality and learning opportunities and assessments were traced over time. Representing these “learning trajectories”—which entail an understanding of the evolving dialectical relationships between learning opportunities and (at least intended) learning outcomes—seems essential to understanding and learning from the teaching practice.
Pedagogies of Protest: African American Teachers and the History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1940–1963
Authors: Baker Scott
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Although the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement marginalizes the role of black educators, revisionist scholars have shown that a significant number of black teachers encouraged student protest and activism. There has, however, been little analysis of the work of black teachers inside segregated schools in the South.

Purpose/Objective

This study examines the courses that Southern African American teachers taught, the pedagogies they practiced, and the extracurricular programs they organized. Using Charleston's Burke Industrial School as a lens to illuminate pedagogies of protest that were practiced by activist educators in the South, this study explores how leading black educators created spaces within segregated schools where they bred dissatisfaction with white supremacy.

Research Design

This historical analysis draws upon archival sources, school board minutes, school newspapers and yearbooks, oral testimony, and autobiographies.

Conclusions/Recommendations

In Charleston, as elsewhere in the South, activist African American teachers made crucial contributions to the civil rights movement. Fusing an activist version of the African American uplift philosophy with John Dewey's democratic conception of progressive education, exemplary teachers created academic and extracurricular programs that encouraged student protest. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, students acted on lessons taught in classes and extracurricular clubs, organizing and leading strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations. The pedagogies that leading African American educators practiced, the aspirations they nurtured, and the student activism they encouraged helped make the civil rights movement possible.
Association through Action: Identity Development in Real and Virtual Video Game Environments
Authors: Abrams Sandra Schamroth
Published: November 2021

Jeremy's1 arms extended behind his head, breaking at the elbow in order to suspend a Band Hero guitar above and behind his shoulders; his fingers on his left hand scuttled about the colored keys on the neck of the guitar, and his fingers on his right hand furiously and repeatedly hit the strum bar on the guitar's body. Almost simultaneously, Kyle, who sang on the microphone, reached a temporary vocal pause in the song, raised and rotated his hands in the air several times, and then, holding onto the microphone wire, twirled the microphone in front of him. Though these middle-school boys did not converse, their actions revealed their knowledge of and personal association with the game and the game environment.