bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Potential of Jigsaw Role Playing to Promote the Social Construction of Knowledge in an Online Graduate Education Course
Authors: Lebaron John , Miller Diane
Published: February 2022

Many online courses fail to promote the active construction of student knowledge or camaraderie among student peers. Accordingly, online course designers and instructors are challenged to promote purposeful peer student dialogue and establish a sense of belonging where all learners perceive themselves as stakeholders in the course community. Online role playing is not a common activity, and electronically networked jigsaw role plays appear to be rarer still. In this article, we describe the transition of a face-to-face jigsaw role-play exercise to a primarily asynchronous graduate-level online course in education. Data collected from various sources suggest that students enjoyed online role play and valued it as a learning experience. We conclude with reflections, lessons learned, and future plans as we continue to explore the challenges and benefits of online role-play in graduate level online courses that serve adult professionals.
Plants, Pathogens, and People: Extending the Classroom to the Web
Authors: Bruce Bertram C. , Dowd Heather , Eastburn Darin M. , D'Arcy Cleora J.
Published: February 2022

Plants, Pathogens, and People is a Web site promoting agricultural awareness via multimedia lectures about plant diseases and online lab activities in which students investigate phenomena. The use of the site in large-enrollment classes for 6-plus years affords a well-documented case of Web-enhanced instruction. Qualitative and quantitative data on student perceptions of the site, their learning, and the relation of the Web site to the course as a whole provide insights into both the benefits and the challenges of Web-based teaching and learning. Students rate the site as an enhancement to their learning, but there are differential responses to various components of the site, which provide a fuller picture of how students see Web-based learning relating to their overall educational experience.
Psychological Type and Asynchronous Written Dialogue in Adult Learning
Authors: Lin Lin , Cranton Patricia , Bridglall Beatrice
Published: February 2022

This study explores how adults learn from asynchronous written dialogue through the lens of psychological type preferences. We asked participants to discover their dominant and auxiliary psychological preferences using the Personal Empowerment through Type inventory. Participants then completed an open-ended survey in which they described their experiences with learning through asynchronous written dialogue. The study shows that participants differed in their responses to online learning as reflected in their sense of enjoyment and their participation in the environment and in the quality of their learning experience. We observed that these differences were associated with psychological type preferences, along with the perceived interactions with the instructors and peers in the learning community. The connections between psychological type and asynchronous written dialogue are discussed.
Modest Changes, Revolutionary Possibilities: Distance Learning and the Future of Education
Authors: Natriello Gary
Published: February 2022

In this essay, I take stock of the developments shaping distance learning and consider the implications for educational researchers and for the future of education. I proceed in four stages. First, I consider the constellation of forces leading to the development of distance education and the emerging shape of this part of the education sector. Second, I review the development of distance learning to date, a path of development based largely on the extension of and borrowing from existing educational arrangements and patterns in face-to-face education. Third, I explore developments at the leading edge of contemporary distance learning that depart in some more substantial way from patterns characteristic of face-to-face education. Fourth, I consider the implications for educational researchers as well as those for policy makers and educators.
Deliberative Democratic Evaluation: Successes and Limitations of an Evaluation of School Choice
Authors: Howe Kenneth R. , Ashcraft Catherine
Published: February 2022

This article briefly characterizes a deliberative democratic approach to program evaluation, recounts its application to the evaluation of school choice policy in the Boulder Valley School District, and describes the results and recommendations of the evaluation. It then assesses the evaluation in terms of its role in stimulating policy change and how it fits with the requirements of the deliberative democratic ideal. It concludes with an assessment of the deliberative democratic approach itself in light of the Boulder experience.
A Qualitative Investigation of African American Males’ Career Trajectory in Engineering: Implications for Teachers, School Counselors, and Parents
Authors: Moore James L.
Published: February 2022

Using the grounded theory approach, this research investigation, drawing on a larger study, examined the factors that were most instrumental in influencing African American males’ decisions to pursue engineering as an academic major and career choice. Using open-ended biographical questionnaires, individual interviews, and focus groups, numerous themes emerged from these data. More specifically, the central themes that had major impact on African American males’ career trajectory were (a) strong interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; (b) strong familial influence and encouragement; (c) strong aptitudes in science and mathematics; (d) meaningful academic experiences and relationships with school personnel; and (e) meaningful enrichment programs, opportunities, and academic experiences. Implications, based on the findings of this research, are provided for teachers, school counselors, and parents.
Effects of Attending a 2-Year Institution on African American Males’ Academic and Social Integration in the First Year of College
Authors: Flowers Lamonta
Published: February 2022

This study explored the impact of attending a 2-year (vs. a 4-year) institution on African American male students’ academic and social integration experiences in the first year of college. Descriptive and multivariate analyses of the 1996/1998 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study showed that African American males attending 4-year institutions were more likely to report higher levels of academic and social integration in the first year of college. These findings suggest that student affairs professionals at 2-year institutions should seek to develop appropriate interventions to ensure that African American males are engaging in academic and social integration experiences during their first year of college.
Can Community Colleges Protect Both access and Standards? The Problem of Remediation
Authors: Perin Dolores
Published: February 2022

A large number of community college students have difficulty with postsecondary-level reading, writing, and math demands, necessitating remedial education. A qualitative case study was conducted to investigate state and institutional practices for remediation in 15 community colleges selected for region, size, and urbanicity. The six states in which the colleges were located varied on the level of regulation of institutional remedial policy and were placed on a spectrum ranging from laissez-faire to micromanagement. Most of the states and all the institutions in the study required the assessment of students’ academic skills, and the institutions mandated assessment even when the states did not require it. The types of assessment instruments varied, and subjective measures such as institutional tests, course grades, and student self-report played an important role in placement decisions. The colleges tended to require that low-scoring students attend remedial courses even in the absence of a state mandate. A wide variety of practices were used to determine student readiness to advance in or exit from remediation. Many of the institutions had procedures designed to require remediation early in the student's program, but both assessment and placement mandates appeared to be softened either at the state or institutional level, with the effect of reducing the number of students who were required to enroll in remedial courses. This trend is discussed as a struggle between the access mission of the traditionally open-door community college, and the drive to protect educational standards.
Motivations to Teach: Psychometric Perspectives across the First Semester of Teacher Education
Authors: Sinclair Catherine , Dowson Martin , Mcinerney Dennis M.
Published: February 2022

Many studies have investigated preservice teachers’ motivations to teach. However, few studies have (a) used robust measurement methodologies to test the psychometric properties of instruments measuring motivations to teach, (b) attempted to measure changes over time in preservice teachers’ motivations to teach, or (c) attempted to assess the effects that relevant variables such as age or gender may have on temporal changes in motivations to teach. This study sought to address these perceived deficits in the literature. Results indicate that the instrument developed in this study was reliable and valid across two waves of data collection, that preservice teachers’ motivations to teach changed across the course of their first semester of teacher education, and that, in some cases, these changes were related to the age of preservice teachers.
Learning the Superintendency: Socialization, Negotiation, and Determination
Authors: Orr Margaret Terry
Published: February 2022

National attention to a possible superintendent shortage has created concern about the changing nature of the superintendency, particularly new challenges, and how superintendents are prepared. Through 23 focus group interviews, superintendents across the country described the challenges they faced when new, how these have changed in recent years, and the benefits and gaps of their leadership preparation. Through a grounded theory analysis and comparison with relevant adult learning and leadership development theories, this article argues that structured advanced leadership development experiences could improve superintendents’ leadership development and transition. The article recommends that these experiences be structured as a learning community that is experiential and intensively reflective.
Worldview of One Black Family in a Middle School Inclusion Program: An Ethnographic Study
Authors: Xu Jianzhong
Published: February 2022

A growing number of schools have implemented inclusion programs for students with disabilities. Yet, there is hardly any acknowledgment of the presence of minorities in the inclusion implementation literature. This article uses ethnographic data to examine the experiences of one Black family in an urban middle school inclusion program. The study revealed that the school and the family held quite different worldviews regarding (a) academics versus social growth, (b) physical safety versus psychological safety, and (c) roles of the family, the child, and the school. In addition, the study revealed that the family's reactions were influenced by the inclusion program directly and by the school's desire to create an overall inclusive environment and that these parental reactions were further shaped by cultural lens and the power differential that existed between the family and the school. This article points to the critical importance of expanding the circle of current discourse on the realization of inclusion to include culturally diverse families, particularly because the data suggest that the longstanding power differential between the school and these families may intensify in inclusive settings.
Meditation, Social Change, and Undergraduate Education
Authors: Rockefeller Steven C.
Published: February 2022

This article argues that meditation guided by a competent teacher can be a positive influence in contemporary American society and even a force for progressive social change. A number of critical issues requiring further study are identified, including the need for a better understanding of meditation from the perspective of developmental psychology and of the relation between meditation and psychotherapy. The article proposes that American educational institutions can benefit from a deeper appreciation of the contemplative dimension of life. Special attention is given to how the American undergraduate college can provide students with opportunities to learn about and experience various forms of meditation. The role of teachers, chaplains, psychological counselors, and health care professionals in introducing meditation to students is discussed.
Some Thoughts on Teaching as Contemplative Practice
Authors: Seidel Jackie
Published: February 2022

In this article I attempt, through stories and reflections, to give voice to some contemporary experiences, including fears and difficulties, of being a teacher in the early 21stcentury. I explore the idea that contemplative practices might open paths for negotiating and rediscovering depth, grace, and courage in our work as teachers, in a time when such ways of living are not broadly or politically encouraged. This article thus focuses on ways in which contemplative practices become pedagogical, holding us in the present, in close proximity to the lives of the children we teach, to the places we actually live, and to the current conditions of the world both near and far—these practices, as opposed to distracting and distancing curricula and practices that seem to exist in no place or time, separate from the world, without relations, and with lofty and ungrounded goals located in the future, such as “preparing children to compete in the global economy.” I reflect about ways that the practice of contemplative teaching turns our work into a form of love, memory, and intimacy, reminding us of our deep life relations through time and place, and possibly having incalculable implications for our curriculum interpretation and classroom practices.
“Girl, you Better go get you a Condom”: Popular Culture and Teen Sexuality as Resources for Critical Multicultural Curriculum
Authors: Ashcraft Catherine
Published: February 2022

Teens encounter a barrage of messages about sexuality in popular culture—messages that shape their identities and schooling experiences in profound ways. Meanwhile, teen sexuality, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) increasingly arouse public panic. To date, however, schools do little to help teens make sense of their sexualities. In this article, I argue that schooling will grow increasingly irrelevant and ineffective if educators fail to address teen sexuality and popular culture. My argument is twofold. First, I suggest that sex education in particular must attend to popular culture. Second, I contend that we can no longer confine efforts to address teen sexuality and popular culture to sex education; rather, we must extend such efforts across a wide range of classroom and schooling contexts. Doing so is important for accomplishing three educational goals: (1) to make a wide range of curriculum (e.g., literacy, social studies, sex education) more relevant and culturally responsive to diverse youth; (2) to develop critical multicultural curriculum that interrogates social inequities, and (3) to indirectly create conditions that would reduce teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV/AIDS. To make this argument, I draw from my 9-month ethnographic study of ESPERANZA, a progressive peer-driven sex education program. In contrast, I then analyze how two popular films deal with issues of sexuality in different ways. I conclude with a discussion of how the insights from these popular texts might inform research and practice in critical multicultural curriculum and in educational efforts to help youth address sexuality.
Being a Novice Teacher in Two Different Settings: Struggles, Continuities, and Discontinuities
Authors: Flores Maria Assunçao
Published: February 2022

Drawing upon empirical research, the article explores the ways in which a cohort of novice teachers learned and developed over a 2-year period. It examines the interplay of personal and contextual influences on teachers’ development over time and on the (transformation of their professional identities. A combination of methods for data collection was used. Findings suggested that novices felt overwhelmed by the amount and variety of duties that they were expected to perform at school. This, along with the lack of support and guidance, forced them into “learning while doing.” Most teachers developed according to a narrow and individual perspective, which was accompanied by a shift from a more inductive and student-centered approach to a more traditional one. However, some teachers seem to have developed in positive ways over time. Personal biographies associated with perceptions of school culture and leadership help to explain both similarities and differences among teachers. Implications of the findings for teacher education and induction are discussed.
Functions of the Learning Portfolio in Student Teachers’ Learning Process
Authors: Mansvelder-Longayroux Desireé D. , Beijaard Douwe , Verloop Nico , Vermunt Jan D.
Published: February 2022

In this study, we aimed to develop a framework that could be used to describe the value of the learning portfolio for the learning process of individual student teachers. Retrospective interviews with 21 student teachers were used, as were their portfolio-evaluation reports on their experiences of working on a portfolio. Seven functions of the learning portfolio in the student teachers’ learning process emerged from the data. It was possible to distinguish between product and process functions: with product functions, the production of a portfolio was seen as working on a tangible end product; with process functions, it was the interplay between reflecting on the learning process and the learning process itself that was the key. Two subgroups of process functions of the learning portfolio were also distinguished, based on the type of learning they facilitated. Different views were expressed by the student teachers about the value of the portfolio, and it seems worthwhile to take these differences into account by making more diverse use of portfolios in teacher-education courses.
(Mis)reading Social Class in the Journey towards College: Youth Development in Urban America
Authors: Bloom Janice
Published: February 2022

While college is perceived as a given for many middle- and upper-income students graduating from high school, the transition from secondary to higher education is a much more complicated one for low-income students, particularly poor and working-class students of color. This article focuses on the critical juncture—one that is under-explored in both the literature on secondary schools and higher education—that these students arrive at when they graduate from high school, and their decision-making processes about whether or not to attend college. What are students worried about? Who are they receiving help from? What do they already know and not know about colleges and the differences between them? How are they making choices about where to apply, and then where to go? What stumbling blocks do they encounter, what are their doubts and fears? Drawing on research conducted at three small urban public schools over the course of a year, this article offers an important lens on the ways that social class shapes students’ developmental experiences and choices, paving some roads and obstructing easy access down others.
A Structural Analysis of Success and Failure of Asian Americans: A Case of Korean Americans in Urban Schools
Authors: Lew Jamie
Published: February 2022

In this article, the author examines how variability of socioeconomic backgrounds affects parental strategies and academic achievement among Korean American youths. The study compares experiences of high- and low-achieving Korean American high school students in New York City urban schools: 1) academically achieving students attending a competitive magnet high school; 2) high-school dropouts attending a community-based GED program (General Educational Development test for high school equivalency diploma). Although Korean Americans have been homogeneously touted for their entrepreneurial success and middle-class status, this study points to the socioeconomic variability within co-ethnic networks, and examines how the difference of social class backgrounds impacts educational strategies employed by the two groups of parents and their access to social capital. The two groups of Korean students, with different socioeconomic backgrounds, operate under different parental strategies of education, as well as gaining different sets of resources from their first-generation parents, co-ethnic networks, and schools. Using Korean Americans as a case study, the findings illustrate the significance of structural factors of social class, social capital, and school context when accounting for academic achievement among Asian Americans in urban schools.
Family (Dis)Advantage and the Educational Prospects of Better off African American Youth: How Race Still Matters
Authors: Gosa Travis L. , Alexander Karl L.
Published: February 2022

While the educational difficulties of poor black students are well documented and have been discussed extensively, the academic performance of well-off African American children has received much less attention. Even with economic and educational resources in the home, well-off African American youth are not achieving at the levels of their white peers. Why is this? A review of relevant literature identifies a set of social processes that pose formidable barriers to the academic and personal development of middle-class African American youth, the closing of the black-white achievement gap, and the preservation of African American family advantage across generations. Constituting a social ecology of African American family life, these processes emanate outward from the immediate home environment, through peers and friends, into neighborhoods and schools, and to society at large.
Gender Differences in Sense of Justice about Grades: A Comparative Study of High School Students in Israel and Germany
Authors: Resh Nura , Dalbert Claudia
Published: February 2022

Assessing students’ aptitude and educational performance and grading them on a hierarchical scale is a universal feature of the schooling process. In light of grades’ instrumental, motivational, and symbolic saliency in students’ school experience, it is not surprising they are highly ”valued goods,” and the process of their fair or unfair distribution is of great concern, echoed in students’ and teachers’ discourses. In this investigation, we focus on gender differentials in sense of justice about grades, comparing high school students in two educational settings: Israel and Germany. Although the strong norm of equitable distribution of grades would predict no gender differentials in grade allocation, the pattern of results suggest that gender plays a role in both the distribution of this reward and the judgment of fair distribution, therefore affecting students’ sense of (in)justice. Similarities as well as certain differences in the comparison of sense of justice of Israeli and German boys and girls are discussed in light of system-specific features.
In the New Millennium: The Role of Spirituality and the Cultural Imagination in Dealing with Diversity and Equity in the Higher Education Classroom
Authors: Tisdell Elizabeth J.
Published: February 2022

Background Context

There has been much recent discussion on the role of spirituality in higher education, and much emphasis in the past 20 years on the importance of attending to diversity and equity concerns, though for the most part these discussions have been separate. This paper takes up the suggestion of scholars such as Barbara Wallace who noted that it is time for a new approach to critical multicultural teaching in higher education, to one that emphasizes social justice, an end to oppression, and spirituality

Focus of Study

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: (1) to discuss the role of spirituality (and its similarities and differences to religion) in engaging the notion of “the cultural imagination”; and (2) to discuss how one can draw on spirituality and the cultural imagination in the higher education classroom in dealing with cultural or diversity and equity issues.

Research Design

This discussion draws on the combined insights of the following: an earlier qualitative study exploring how spirituality informs the work of 31 educators from different cultural groups teaching classes dealing with diversity and equity issues and how they draw on it in the classroom; the insights of many recent authors who discuss the importance of attending to both imagination and spirituality in higher education teaching without pushing a religious agenda; and those who draw on cultural story, image, symbol, poetry, and art as a part of their teaching about diversity and equity issues.

Conclusions and Recommendations

In the ongoing process of meaning-making about culture, individuals re-weave new patterns of meaning by combining new threads of cultural and other experience with the old threads. This process is engaging cultural imagination. Image, symbol, music, ritual, art, poetry, often touch off memory in conscious and unconscious ways, which sometimes connects to spirituality. This paper explores how one can combine these ways of knowing that are a part of cultural imagination, with the intellectual and critical analysis aspects of higher education to facilitate greater student learning and greater equity in society.
Unpacking Standards in Early Childhood Education
Authors: Brown Christopher P.
Published: February 2022

Background/Content

Policy-makers at the federal and state levels have increased their efforts to implement standards-based accountability reform in early childhood education (ECE) to improve the academic readiness of children for elementary school. As these policies have taken on more prominence within ECE reform, national organizations such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the National Association of Early Childhood Specialist in State Departments of Education and the National Institute for Early Education Research have produced guidelines and suggestions for formulating standards. Early childhood researchers have investigated and questioned the purpose, goals, and policy process of early learning standards. These works examine a range of issues such as capacity and capital, curriculum and assessment, and readiness and retention.

Focus of Study

In this article, I examine how early childhood stakeholders in the state of Wisconsin responded to the current Bush Administration's Good Start, Grow Smart (GSGS) initiative by creating a double-voiced document that answered requirements of the GSGS initiative while at the same time attempting to pique the interest and support of the state's loosely coupled field of ECE to a voluntary set of standards. Examining these stakeholders’ response highlights the tensions that exist in attempting to reform ECE and how simple policy solutions such as the GSGS initiative fail to address the complexity that exists within the field of ECE.

Research Design

This research project is a qualitative instrumental case study that examines the formulation and implementation of Wisconsin's Model Early Learning Standards.

Conclusions

Even though the Early Learning Standards Steering Committee created a double-voiced document that responded to policy-makers’ demands for early learning standards while attempting to attract and unite early childhood programs and practitioners around a collective understanding of the goals of ECE, the future of the field is uncertain. The second-class status of ECE in the realm of policy and the investment of capital that is required to alter the field cause one to question whether systemic reform could ever occur in ECE. Nevertheless, policy-makers’ demands for improved student performance will not die down simply because states are implementing early learning standards. Thus, the field of ECE is at a critical point within the history of education reform, and stakeholders must continue to promote a vision of ECE that goes beyond simply protecting current practices and demand structural changes that foster the growth and development of all children.
District Induction Policy and New Teachers’ Experiences: An Examination of Local Policy Implementation in Connecticut
Authors: Youngs Peter
Published: February 2022

Background

Studies of new teacher induction have typically examined the structural components of mentoring programs or documented the nature of support provided to beginning teachers. More recently, Susan Moore Johnson and her colleagues examined new teachers’ induction experiences across multiple states and preparation routes. In addition, Thomas Smith and Richard Ingersoll used the 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey to investigate the experiences and retention rates of beginning teachers who received different levels of induction support. Despite these advances, there is little understanding in the research literature of the relationship between district induction policy and the nature and quality of the support experienced by beginning teachers.

Purpose

One purpose of the study was to explore whether variations in district policy seemed to be associated with differences in the nature and quality of instructional assistance experienced by first- and second-year teachers. A second purpose was to investigate how the understandings of induction held by mentors, principals, and other educators seemed to mediate the effects of district policy on new teachers’ experiences.

Research Design

The research design involved qualitative case studies during 2000–2001 of two urban high-poverty Connecticut districts, Copley and Ashton. Copley and Ashton served similar percentages of students eligible for free and reduced lunch (58.0% and 54.3%, respectively) and had similar policies with regard to mentor training and work conditions. The two districts differed with regard to district policy related to mentor selection and assignment, district policy related to professional development for second-year teachers, and district size (10,216 students and 3,361 students).

Findings

The study found that beginning teachers in Copley experienced higher quality assistance than their counterparts in Ashton with regard to acquiring curricular knowledge, planning instruction, and reflecting on practice. These differences seemed related to district policy involving mentor selection, mentor assignment, and professional development. In addition, the understandings of induction held by mentors and others seemed to mediate the effects of district policy on new teachers’ experiences.

Conclusions

Study findings suggest that future research should examine whether there are grade-level and content-area matches between mentors and mentees and how mentors’ and other educators’ knowledge and skills influence beginning teachers’ induction experiences. In addition, scholars should consider how educators’ understandings of induction interact with school and district policies and organizational conditions to shape their work with beginning teachers. Finally, researchers should conceptualize induction as involving multiple individuals in the provision of support for beginning teachers.
Professional Rigor, Public Engagement and Judicial Review: A Proposal for Enhancing the Validity of Education Adequacy Studies
Authors: Rebell Michael A.
Published: February 2022

Background/Context

In recent years, state legislatures, state education departments, and advocacy groups in over 30 states have sponsored education adequacy studies, which aim to determine objectively the amount of funding needed to provide all students a meaningful opportunity for an adequate education. Not surprisingly, because of their growing influence on funding decisions, these studies have now become the subject of critical commentary and judicial scrutiny, and serious questions have arisen about the validity of the methodologies used in some of the studies. By setting out to determine objectively the resource levels needed to provide all students with an adequate education—and by doing so through relatively open and transparent processes— the contemporary adequacy cost studies are vast improvements over the ad-hoc political deal-making processes of the past. Nevertheless, the validity and the reliability of these methodologies can be improved.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article provides the first detailed analysis of judicial critiques of the state of the art of “costing out” studies in order to recommend improvements to the current practice of costing-out educational adequacy.

Research Design

The article engages in an extensive review of judicial critiques of adequacy cost studies, literature critiquing adequacy cost studies, and the adequacy cost studies themselves, in order to identify the best and worst practices in the field.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Based on these critiques, the article recommends explicit articulation of the premises behind the adoption of particular outcome standards, more precise means for identifying the extent to which students with special needs require extra resources, specific mechanisms to minimize political bias and political manipulations, and the use of “quality education models” to integrate efficiency and accountability considerations within the basic cost analysis. In addition, more extensive public engagement and continuing judicial oversight will be necessary to ensure the credibility and the legitimacy of the ultimate judgments that result from these studies.
(Mis-)Education into American Racism
Authors: Lin Linda J.
Published: February 2022

Background

Traditional approaches to race in the United States have located race in individuals and groups in terms of differences in attitudes, levels of awareness, and stages of identity development. Alternatively, a social stratification approach examines structural inequalities in job opportunities, the educational system, housing, and so on.

Purpose

In this paper I shift the analytical focus to the production of race in face-to-face interaction, examining interaction as a process of (mis-) education into American racism. Based on fieldwork in a school reform organization that institutionalized race conversations, I show how people try to engage one another on matters of race, resist one another's efforts, and teach one another over time—however unintentionally—to avoid talking about race with one another.

Research Design

This case study draws on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork from December 2003 to July 2004. I attended staff meetings in a nonprofit school reform organization and in affiliated schools, taking notes, collecting site documents, conducting interviews, and talking informally with people in schools and in the organization. I tell a series of stories told to me about a professional development activity called “the capes,” an activity apparently designed to surface racial trouble. I examine what was said about race, to whom, and when, taking the telling of stories as my unit of analysis. This analytical move allows me to draw together the varied experiences of the people in the organization, my own experience as a researcher, and the reader's experience to show how people attempt to transform one another in interaction.

Findings and Conclusion

I argue that “learning about race” is less a matter of individual effort and goodwill than a messy process of negotiating the ambiguities and dangers of social interaction. I conclude that we must account for these local constraints in order to find viable possibilities for transforming the conditions of our everyday lives.
Difficult Collective Deliberations: Anthropological Notes toward a Theory of Education
Authors: Varenne Hervé
Published: February 2022

Background/Context

In the 1970s, Lawrence Cremin urged researchers to remember that education is more than schooling. Few heeded this call, perhaps because of the absence of the theoretical framework needed to make this more than a platitude. As a cultural anthropologist, I argue that education is a fundamental human activity that is infinitely more complex than anything that can happen during learning lessons in school. The argument is a theoretical one bolstered by the case studies included in this special issue.

Policy Context

There are two main strains of research by those concerned with education as something that does not happen solely or even mainly in schools. In anthropology, it has been necessary to be aware of this given the absence of institutions easily recognizable as schools in many of the societies in which anthropologists have worked. But even in this discipline, the emphasis was more on incidental enculturation than on education as deliberate effort. In sociology and related fields, many have looked at nonschool environments as causal to the socialization that appears to be a precondition to success in schools. The point of reference remained schooling.

Purpose

In this analytic article, I pick up two key terms in Cremin's definition: “effort” and “deliberation.” Through a contrast with Bourdieu's theory of habitus, I show that both words make sense in terms of an amended take on Garfinkel's ethnomethodology, Lave's understanding of learning as movement through differentiated social fields (“communities of practice”), de Certeau's insistence on “enunciation,” and Rancière's focus on productive ignorance. I show how all the case studies included in the special issue take us out of the world of early learning and into the world of continued efforts to change both oneself and one's consociates through often difficult collective deliberations.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Focusing on ubiquitous education about life conditions rather than early socialization or school-based skills reopens the question of the processes that actually constitute the school politically. If religion, ideology, artistic tastes, technologies, and so on, must be seen as developing essentially in and around institutions uneasily controlled by the “public,” then the conversations by school people about schooling (its policies, prerequisites, and consequences) miss what remains most powerful in human life—the continued efforts by all to transform their conditions.
Outspoken Indigenes and Nostalgic Migrants: Maori and Samoan Educating Performances in an Aotearoa New Zealand Cultural Festival
Authors: Gershon Ilana , Collins Solonaima
Published: February 2022

Background/Context

Theorists of civil society often view civil society as a site for democratic education. Civil society is supposed to assist democratic practice by offering people contexts in which they practice promoting the common good. This article, following Nina Eliasoph's intervention, takes this to be a claim requiring ethnographic exploration. The article provides an ethnographic answer to the question, What do people actually tell each other about the common good or national well-being in civil society moments? To explore this question, the authors turn to how a Samoan cultural group and a Maori cultural group rehearse and perform in a citywide high school cultural festival in Auckland.

Purpose

This article compares how migrant high school students and indigenous high school students use performances of traditional songs and dances to explore their relationships to the New Zealand nation. The article examines how the rehearsals take place, particularly who disciplines whom and how different levels of expertise are displayed. The authors compare how tutors circulate knowledge and discipline in the rehearsals with how the students perform their relationships to the New Zealand nation on stage.

Setting

We conducted ethnographic research at two different high schools in West Auckland, New Zealand.

Population

We observed two cultural groups with approximately 20 high school students in each. We also interviewed approximately 10 teachers and tutors who had been involved in preparing Samoan and Maori cultural groups for this festival.

Research Design

This was a qualitative case study. We observed rehearsals for 8 weeks and conducted semistructured interviews with students and teachers.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The authors argue that through the rehearsals and the performance, the Samoan migrant students and the indigenous Maori students adopt different relationships to the nation. The Samoan migrant students see themselves as more aligned to Samoa as the homeland that few of them have visited. They are out of place in the New Zealand nation and use nostalgic performances to perform this sense of dislocation. The Maori students, on the other hand, use the performances to express a political disenchantment with the New Zealand nation. They are constantly critiquing government policies in the context of these performances. In short, both Samoan and Maori students are expressing the ways in which they do not belong to the nation through their performances.
“Becoming” a Teacher
Authors: Gomez Mary Louise , Black Rebecca W. , Allen Anna-Ruth
Published: February 2022

Background/Context

In this article, we trace the development of a prospective secondary science teacher as she begins to examine her identity as a White person. We explore how the social languages of her teacher education program challenge, intermingle, and blend with ones she brought to the program from her midwestern small-town childhood and a professional life in science.

Research Design

In this case study, we deploy Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin's notion of ideological becoming to trace her development from program entry through four semesters of program participation. We show how various fieldwork, course, and volunteer experiences challenge the ways she talks and thinks about herself, her students, teaching, and the roles that race/ethnicity and culture play in these relationships.

Research Questions

We ask: How does this prospective teacher understand her identity as a White person? What relationship does she understand that this identity has to teaching students who are from many different cultural backgrounds? What kinds of dilemmas arise for a prospective teacher when she begins to understand who she is as a White person? How does she negotiate them? And what role does her teacher education program play in encouraging and supporting her negotiations?

Conclusions/Recommendations

The article concludes by considering what practicing teachers and university teacher educators might do to support new teachers who have begun to question their identities and those of their students, and to craft pedagogy to meet students’ needs. Included in the recommendations are considerations for the location of class-room placements for prospective teachers; the nurturing of collaborative relationships between classroom teachers and university teachers; teacher education program pedagogy that promotes critical inquiry into issues of race; and the development of communities of prospective teachers who can struggle with such issues as their identities as racialized beings.
Approaching and Attending College: Anthropological and Ethnographic Accounts
Authors: Koyama Jill Peterson
Published: February 2022

Background/Context

This review article draws on the growing body of literature at the interfaces of anthropology and education, as well as other educational studies outside anthropology that have relevance to social and cultural frames.

Purpose

Drawing together and analyzing anthropological and ethnographic studies, conducted during the last two decades, this review highlights the theoretical, methodological, and analytical patterns that have defined anthropological approaches to studying education.

Findings/Results

The studies, in the aggregate, tell us a great deal about how students negotiate schooling to create academic identifications, find and construct networks rich in social and cultural capital, and experience a sense of belonging. Conversely, students who are marginalized, constrained, or have limited access to school contexts—through institutionalized practices, policies, and ideologies—are far more likely to disengage academically, to exert their agency, to “resist” school, and to forgo college attendance. What also becomes increasingly clear in regards to college preparation and access is that the experiences of students and their families vary greatly, depending on the social, cultural, political, and historical contexts within which youth's college choices are shaped. As well, the studies reveal that the factors that impact college persistence and completion parallel those found to influence pre-college schooling.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This review of anthropological studies tell us much less about the actual college experiences of racial/ethnic minority and poor students and the author calls for further scholarship in this area.
Enacting Literacy: Local Understanding, Significant Disability, and a New Frame for Educational Opportunity
Authors: Kliewer Christopher , Biklen Douglas
Published: February 2022

In this article on the literate development of individuals with significant disabilities, the authors describe local understanding as a relationship in which the value, intelligence, and literate presence of the person with disabilities is presumed and responsive contexts are developed that foster literate growth. Implications for policy and students without disabilities are highlighted.
Moving beyond Celebration: Challenging Curricular Orthodoxy in the Teaching ofBrownand Its Legacies
Authors: Hess Diana E.
Published: February 2022

The case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka holds an esteemed position in the secondary school curriculum. Given prominent attention in virtually all social studies textbooks and included in more state standards documents than any other Supreme Court ruling, the Brown decision is often presented to secondary school students as a democratic achievement of such magnitude that it deserves iconic status. In contrast, scholars and civil rights activists are currently deliberating whether Brown and its legacies should be viewed as an icon, liberation referent, unfulfilled promise, well-intentioned error, or irrelevant. This article explores the incongruity between “academic” and “school” knowledge about Brown and argues for a revisioning of this landmark case and its effects in the secondary school curriculum.
Keeping on Keeping On: OCR and Complaints of Racial Discrimination 50 Years afterBrown
Authors: Pollock Mica
Published: February 2022

This article, written by a former civil rights investigator in the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), contends that ordinary Americans advocating for equal educational opportunity for students of color might enlist OCR more actively and knowingly to help secure racial equality of opportunity 50 years after Brown. Now a scholar of racial inequality in education, the author shows that OCR's original purpose of rooting out racial discrimination in federally funded educational programs has been both hampered by hostile administrations and eclipsed by nonrace casework in the years since OCR's inception. The author argues that to successfully enlist OCR's civil rights tools today, complainants must arrive at OCR with as much concrete evidence of racial harm as possible and be ready to navigate some core disputes over defining and investigating racial discrimination in the current era.