bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Culturally Competent and Racially Conscious Professional Development for School Leaders: A Review of the Literature
Authors: Spikes Daniel D.
Published: November 2021

Scholars have argued that leaders should be more culturally competent in light of the changing demographics and dynamics of schools. While professional development has historically been used as a mechanism to develop the skillset of in-service educators, little is known about the aspects of this in-service training that lead to the type of transformation needed to meet the needs of all students. Therefore, this chapter will review and synthesize the relevant literature on professional development, cultural competency, and transformative learning to highlight critical components of culturally competent professional development. The findings from this chapter will enable school district and building leaders seeking to promote racial equity within their schools to provide meaningful learning opportunities for their staff.
More than a Number: A Capabilities Framework for Conceptualizing Community College Success
Authors: Topper Amelia Marcetti
Published: November 2021

Context

Community colleges in the United States are increasingly tasked with demonstrating their commitment to improved institutional outcomes even as measures of student success are critiqued for failing to capture the colleges’ diverse missions and student populations.

Purpose

This paper offers an alternative framework for understanding and evaluating community college student success based on the normative and interdisciplinary capabilities approach.

Setting

The larger study on which this paper is based took place at a large, diverse community college located in the southwestern United States.

Participants

The sample for this study consists of 958 e-survey respondents (N = 17,080; response rate 6%), and semi-structured follow-up interviews with a heterogeneous group of 40 community college students.

Research Design

The study uses mixed methods consisting of a large-scale e-survey, student interviews, participant- and researcher-generated visual methods, and in-depth reviews of the community college and capabilities approach literatures.

Results

The author used a top-down/bottom-up process to generate a final empirical list of 12 community college capabilities that are informed by both the literature and student voices: practical reason, knowledge and imagination, learning disposition, social relations and networks, respect and recognition, emotional health, bodily health, economic opportunities, love and care, language competency and confidence, autonomy, and refuge. This paper also transparently documents the methodological process the author uses to generate these capabilities to aid both researchers and practitioners in their efforts to help students flourish and thrive as they navigate the higher education landscape.

Conclusions

The results of this study provide educational researchers and practitioners with a methodological process for developing their own locally sourced understandings of student success. As proposed in this paper, reframing the educational experience around capabilities and capabilities development provides colleges—and education institutions more generally— with a new, more responsive and democratic set of tools to use in understanding all the ways in which community colleges help students build and sustain meaningful lives.
Spreading the Word: Boundary Crossers Building Collective Capacity for Data Use
Authors: Hubers Mireille D. , Poortman Cindy L. , Schildkamp Kim , Pieters Jules M.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The data team intervention was designed to support schools in using data while developing a solution to an educational problem. The participating data team members are responsible for building collective capacity within their school for using data and implementing actions related to the improvement plan. This can be challenging, because although they have gained knowledge and experience with data use and the educational problem, their colleagues who were not on the data team have not. As a result, there is a heightened risk for discontinuity between the behaviors of such colleagues and of the data team members: Colleagues will not automatically use data nor implement the actions for improvement. These discontinuities are referred to as boundaries. To establish common ground with their colleagues, data team members need to act as boundary crossers by brokering their knowledge.

Purpose

The present study used a process view to determine how data team members acted as boundary crossers by studying what content they had brokered, the level at which they had addressed that content, and what activities they had used to cross boundaries.

Intervention

Data teams consist of six to eight educators who collaboratively learn how to use data to analyze and address an educational problem at their school. They work following a cyclical procedure.

Research Design

A longitudinal qualitative case study was conducted in four Dutch schools that implemented the data team intervention.

Data Collection and Analysis

Artifacts were collected and all team members were interviewed twice. Log files, minutes of the meetings, and progress reports were used to obtain a complete picture of boundary crossing and to provide background information. A coding scheme was used in order to determine what content was brokered, the level at which the content was addressed, and the activities used to broker the content.

Findings/Results

Findings illustrated that team members mainly brokered knowledge about the educational problem and data use as applied to the educational problem, but rarely about data use in general. Overall, content was almost exclusively addressed at the level of awareness, indicating that only basic information was brokered.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Successful boundary crossing cannot be taken for granted: Team members brokered their knowledge in ways less likely to be effective. When they receive additional support for this, they are likely to increase their team's effectiveness in building school-wide capacity for both data use and the implementation of actions related to the improvement plan.
Online Stratifcation: How Academic Performance Indicators Relate to Choices between Cyber Charter Schools
Authors: Mann Bryan A. , Kotok Stephen
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

A primary argument that supports charter school policy assumes students favor schools with high academic performance ratings, leading to systemic school improvement. Previous research challenges this assumption but has limited generalizability because geographic and enrollment constraints limit student choice sets.

Purpose/Objective

This study examines student enrollment patterns within cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania, a state where elected policymakers tend to view choice as a means for school improvement. Cyber charter schools are advantageous to study in this context because they have fewer enrollment barriers, helping researchers account for constraints found in previous studies.

Research Design

Using consecutive years of student-level enrollment data, we use descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression analyses to answer the following questions: Is a particular cyber charter school more popular if it displays relatively higher performance on academic indicators? To what extent do enrollments in the highest performing cyber charter school relate to the demographics of students and school environments that they left?

Findings/Results

The findings suggest that despite the more accessible choice sets inherent in the cyber charter school sector, academic performance indicators still are not linked to popularity within the sector. Enrollment clustering persists along student demographics and feeder district traits.

Conclusions/Recommendations

These findings suggest that even in the cyber charter school sector where key enrollment restrictions are removed, inequitable enrollment patterns persist. These findings continue to challenge basic assumptions used in school choice policy framing. Policymakers should consider this evidence when and if they design and implement charter school policy, creating policy that accounts for inequitable enrollments that occur under current policy logic.
Activist Principals: Leading for Social Justice in Ciudad Juárez, Baltimore, and Brazil
Authors: DeMatthews David Edward , Tarlau Rebecca
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

A growing interest in how principals address issues of social justice in schools has emerged with an emphasis on critically interrogating school practices, policies, curriculum, and instructional approaches. Yet, many injustices, which prompt calls for social justice, are created outside of the school by larger socioeconomic arrangements and require greater consideration and collaboration between schools and communities. Given the interrelatedness of schools and communities, this study explores the principal's role in addressing social injustices through activism and utilizing the community's resources and emerging political opportunities to promote social justice.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine how, if at all, do principals with social justice orientations engage in activism, particularly in relation to their school-community context and the networks and political opportunities that are available within and around the school.

Setting

Data were collected in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Baltimore, United States; and Ceará, Brazil.

Research Design

This qualitative multicase study used in-depth interviews and observations to explore the leadership actions of principals with social justice orientations.

Findings

Findings revealed the specific actions taken by principals to understand the social and political context in which they work. The principals in the study utilized their understanding of context to inform their avenues for organizing activity and how they lead to strategically position their schools as resources to support communities and families. Challenges to an activist approach to leadership were also identified, including (a) tensions associated with the multifaceted nature of social justice and the demands; (b) ethical obligations of being a principal within a system and needing to adhere to district policies and priorities; and (c) the unpredictability and uncertainty of outcomes in certain school-community contexts.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Major conclusions and recommendations for this study include the need to instill in principals a recognition that what happens in society impacts schools, and therefore, requires leadership to be attentive to community needs and activist-oriented. Preparing and supporting principals requires additional attention to how principals can lead for social justice with communities and in ways that are responsive to context. The potential constraints associated with being employed by a school district or connected to a social movement with predetermined priorities needs to be further explored and considered.
What We Mean When We Talk about Teaching: The Limits of Professional Language and Possibilities for Professionalizing Discourse in Teachers’ Conversations
Authors: Horn Ilana Seidel , Kane Britnie Delinger
Published: November 2021

Background

Long-standing calls to infuse technical language in teaching—what we call the Professional Language Project—have been revived in recent years along with the core practices movement in teacher education. The Professional Language Project has been identified as a desired outcome of research and a potential benefit to teacher education.

Objective

Drawing on sociolinguistic studies of teachers’ sensemaking, we critique the Professional Language Project to show its limits in making the intended contribution to teaching and teacher education.

Research Design

This analytic essay uses a practice perspective on both language and teaching to interrogate the premises of the Professional Language Project. Specifically, we hold up its goals against empirical findings about how teachers use language to make sense of instructional decisions in their workplaces.

Conclusions

Empirical studies of teachers’ in situ language use point to two fallacies in the Professional Language Project. First, the presence or absence of technical terms in teachers’ talk does not relate to the depth of their sensemaking or instructional sophistication, indicating that technical terms do not accomplish the conceptual goals that some Professional Language Project advocates suggest. Second, a prevailing common-sense discourse culture in teaching often results in conceptual slippage in the use of technical terms, leading words to be absorbed into existing conceptual systems more than they catalyze new understandings.
Immigrant-Origin Students in Community College: How Do They Use Their Time on Campus?
Authors: Hernandez Edwin , Suárez-Orozco Carola , Cerda Janet , Osei-Twumasi Olivia , Corral Monique , Garcia Yuliana , Katsiaficas Dalal , Ruedas-Gracia Nidia
Published: November 2021

Background

Immigrant-origin students are the fastest growing new population in community colleges, making up nearly a third of the community college population. To date, little is known about how immigrant-origin students make use of their time on community college campuses.

Purpose

This study sought to understand in what ways and to what extent immigrant-origin students—defined as first-generation (foreign-born) or second-generation (born in the United States to immigrant parents)—used their out-of-class campus time at three urban community colleges. We examined the following quantitative questions: How much time do students report spending on campus doing what activities? What is the demographic variation in these patterns (according to immigrant generation, ethnicity/race, and gender)? What factors predict how much overall time immigrant-origin students spend on campus? What is the effect of academically productive time spent on campus on grade point average for immigrant-origin students? We also explored the following qualitative questions: What do immigrant-origin community college students say about the time they spend on campus? What insights do they have as to what impedes or facilitates their spending (or not spending) time on campus?

Research Design

The study proposed a new conceptual framework and employed an embedded sequential explanatory mixed-methods design approach. As part of a survey, participants (N = 644, 54.6% women; M age = 20.2 years; first-generation immigrant n = 213, 33%; second-generation immigrant n = 275, 43%) completed a series of items about the time that they spent on campus and their relationships with their instructors and peers. Qualitative response data were derived from an embedded interview subsample of participants (n = 58).

Results

Immigrant-origin students reported spending a considerable amount of out-of-class time—an average of 9.2 hours—on campus. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that peer relationships and time spent helping parents or commuting positively predicted the amount of time students spent on campus. Qualitative responses provided further insights into immigrant-origin community college student experiences and provided perspectives on issues contributing to their spending out-of-class time on campus.

Conclusions

This study has implications for research, practice, and policy, given that immigrant-origin students make considerable use of their campus spaces. Community colleges should strive to nurture positive spaces and design the kind of on-campus programming that will enhance the success of immigrant-origin students. Collectively, these services will not only enhance the experience of immigrant-origin students but also be beneficial to the larger campus community that uses the community college sector as a stepping-stone toward upward social and economic mobility.
Race-Making in Schools of Choice: Teacher Narrative Construction of the Black Interloper
Authors: O'Connor Carla , Robinson Shantá R. , Neal-Jackson Alaina , Hope Elan C. , Hengen Adam , Drotar Samantha
Published: November 2021

Background

Blacks are commonly targeted as a population that will benefit from school choice. Drawing upon market theory, school choice advocates argue that educational opportunity will increase for Blacks and other underserved populations when schools are required to compete for students. With choice, the historically underserved can presumably opt into schools that will provide their children higher quality education that confers better educational outcomes. To date, the promise of choice remains unfulfilled.

Purpose/Objective

We examine one underexplored factor that may contribute to the unfulfilled promise of school choice: how professionals make meaning of the very students who are expected to most benefit (in this case Black students) and how this meaning-making may compromise the prospect of greater educational opportunity via choice. In particular, we explore the stories teachers tell about Black students in the course of making meaning of Black underperformance as a professional “problem” and their own role in resolving this problem. Of special concern is how teachers racialize Black students via their narration of the status and experience of these youth and the consequent implications for all Black students in one choice context.

Research Design

The data for this study was collected as part of a multi-year, multi-method study of Black students in three demographically distinct school districts participating in an inter-district school choice system in the Midwest. Relying primarily on focus group interviews with teachers, we evaluated teachers’ narratives within and across districts to determine the discourse patterns that were germane to and differed across districts.

Findings

In the same way that Blacks are not often readily imagined as both Black and American, the Black students in the districts under study were constructed by teachers as interlopers—not readily imagined as both Black and full members of the school communities in which they were enrolled. In blurring these boundaries, teachers 1) rationalized their own sense of professional inefficacy in facilitating the academic success of Black students; and 2) normalized perspectives and practices that situate Black students and their families as deficient.

Conclusion/Recommendations

School choice was not articulated in these districts via professional perspectives and practices that increased Black educational opportunity, but was reconfigured as a trope that rationalized Black exclusion and underperformance. Unless teachers are supported in constructing radically different narratives than those reported herein, they are unlikely to cultivate personal practical knowledge that facilitates Black educational access and opportunity in schools of choice or elsewhere.
Diving into the Pool: An Analysis of Texas Community College Students’ Transfer Institution Choice Sets
Authors: Jabbar Huriya , Epstein Eliza , Edwards Wesley , Sánchez Joanna D.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Community colleges are drawing renewed attention from policy makers and advocates seeking to increase college attendance and completion. Nearly half of all students awarded a bachelor's degree attended a community college. However, we know little about how community college students decide where and how to pursue postsecondary education, or how they select a four-year institution—choices that have significant implications for student outcomes.

Focus of Study

This study examines transfer-intending community college students’ choice sets, or the list of institutions they are selecting from. Specifically, we ask: What kinds of colleges and universities are in transfer-intending students’ choice sets, and how are these choice sets shaped by individual and structural barriers?

Setting

The research took place in two community college systems in Central Texas.

Research Design

Drawing on data from 95 interviews with transfer-intending community college students in Texas—the majority of whom are first-generation college-goers, low-income, or students of color—we examine their choice sets, the institutions to which they considered transferring.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our findings suggest significant heterogeneity among our sample of community college students seeking transfer to four-year institutions. We find that geography, financial concerns, and quality of institution all play a role in student considerations—though these mechanisms operate differently for groups of students. Students’ choices are bounded, but in different ways. We identify five approaches to choice-set construction among our sample that have differential implications for programs and policies that help students successfully apply and transfer to high-quality four-year institutions.
Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information
Authors: Wineburg Sam , McGrew Sarah
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The Internet has democratized access to information but in so doing has opened the floodgates to misinformation, fake news, and rank propaganda masquerading as dispassionate analysis. Despite mounting attention to the problem of online misinformation and growing agreement that digital literacy efforts are important, prior research offers few concrete ideas about what skilled evaluations look like.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Our purpose in this study was to seek out those who are skilled in online evaluations in order to understand how their strategies and approaches to evaluating digital content might inform educational efforts. We sampled 45 experienced users of the Internet: 10 Ph.D. historians, 10 professional fact checkers, and 25 Stanford University undergraduates. Analysis focused on the strategies participants used to evaluate online information and arrive at judgments of credibility.

Research Design

In this expert/novice study, participants thought aloud as they evaluated live websites and searched for information on social and political issues such as bullying, minimum wage, and teacher tenure. We analyze and present findings from three of the tasks participants completed.

Findings/Results

Historians and students often fell victim to easily manipulated features of websites, such as official-looking logos and domain names. They read vertically, staying within a website to evaluate its reliability. In contrast, fact checkers read laterally, leaving a site after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs in order to judge the credibility of the original site. Compared to the other groups, fact checkers arrived at more warranted conclusions in a fraction of the time.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We draw on insights gleaned from the fact checkers’ practices to examine current curricular approaches to teaching web credibility as well as to suggest alternatives.
Teacher Professional Dispositions: Much Assemblage Required
Authors: Strom Kathryn , Margolis Jason , Polat Nihat
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Despite noted difficulties with defining and assessing teacher dispositions, U.S. state education departments and national accreditation agencies have included dispositions in mandates and standards both for determining teacher quality and for assessing the quality of the teacher preparation programs that certify them. Thus, there remains a significant impetus to specify dispositions to assess, identify what “good” dispositions look like in practice, and determine the best way to measure them.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we aim to problematize the construct of “teacher dispositions” through a critical synthesis of literature and a discussion of a rhizomatic perspective to generate a (re)conceptualization that is more closely aligned with the immensely complex nature of teaching and learning. Second, we draw on samples of university-generated teacher disposition assessment tools to provide concrete examples that “put to work” this complex perspective on dispositions.

Research Design

To apply ideas introduced in our rhizomatic framework focused on multiple, dynamic assemblages, we conducted a qualitative textual analysis of a sample of 16 widely available assessment tools used by university-based teacher preparation programs to measure teachers’ professional dispositions.

Findings and Conclusions

Overall, the vast majority of disposition criteria included in the tools reviewed were temporal and relational, seeking to assess the interactions of the teacher candidate amidst a variety of potential circumstances as well as material and discursive factors. This reveals a paradox, however, since, despite their more contextual phrasing, these criteria ultimately seek to assess an individual and are high-stakes only for that teacher. Yet, we suggest that the results of this review may be an indication that the field is moving toward a more multifaceted vision of teaching that can better take into account the dynamic, situated, and relational nature of teaching activity. We also suggest the language accounting for some of the complexity of teaching in the disposition assessment tools we reviewed may be an entry point into a more dynamic, vital materialist vision of the profession.
Families in the Driver's Seat: Catalyzing Familial Transformative Agency for Equitable Collaboration
Authors: Ishimaru Ann M. , Lott Joe L. , Torres Kathryn E. , O'Reilly-Diaz Karen
Published: November 2021

Context

An emerging body of research has begun to re-envision how nondominant families and communities might become powerful actors in equity-based educational change when issues of power, race, culture, language, and class are integrated into family engagement efforts. Beyond the commitment to more equitable engagement, the field offers little empirically-grounded evidence with regard to how to shift power and build collective agency, particularly in the moment-to-moment interactions that constitute the ongoing daily practice of family-school relations.

Purpose of Study

We sought to understand how nondominant parents and educators could enact equitable collaboration in the school-based co-design of a parent education curriculum. We sought to better “map” the journey to transformative agency of nondominant parents by asking: What were the turning points in the emergence and evolution of transformative agency amongst nondominant parents from different racial/cultural/linguistic communities? Within and across these turning points, how did parents narrate and negotiate their roles and evolve their transformative agency?

Setting

The research took place in a suburban school district in the Western United States outside a major urban city, in a region of increasing suburban poverty and marked racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

Participants

The design team included nine parents from two schools who identified as African/African American, Latina, Vietnamese, and white; three white teachers, two white principals, two district administrators (African American and multiracial), and five researchers (Asian American, African American, and Latino/a).

Research Design

This study merged a framework of equitable collaborations with expansive learning theory and employed participatory design research (PDR) methodologies to examine 10 design meetings with historically marginalized parents that sought to build authentic relationships, reciprocity, and accountability to one another and the targeted outcome.

Findings/Results

Our findings suggest a series of turning points marked by discursive expansions in which nondominant parents re-envisioned their own and educators’ roles in educational change. Through the design process, parents surfaced and engaged historical contradictions, developed collective understandings, modeled possibilities for collective voice and influence, and enacted their collective influence through the collection of data from other parents, the development and piloting of a lesson on bullying, and the completion of the curriculum.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We argue that these methods and theories offer ways forward from documenting deficit-based processes and historically-rooted power asymmetries in family engagement towards enacting equitable and democratic processes that leverage the expertise of nondominant families in tandem with that of formal educators and researchers.
Toward Teacher Preparation 3.0
Authors: Napolitan Kate , Traynor John , Tully Deborah , Carney Joanne , Donnelly Susan , Herrenkohl Leslie Rupert
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The literature review (Phelps, this issue) outlines tensions that can come about in partnerships and collaborations between P–12 schools and teacher education. With these challenges as part of the context, the authors of this article describe the particular moves that school-based and community partners working with four teacher education programs made to prepare preservice teachers who are better oriented toward students, their families, and communities as part of a legislative initiative.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article presents three cases of how four teacher education programs, in collaboration with partners, moved toward a more democratic model of teacher education as part of a legislative initiative in Washington state. Aspects of community teaching were central in each of the collaborations. Teacher education programs included in this article saw the moves they were making as working toward what Zeichner refers to as Teacher Preparation 3.0.

Research Design

This article employed qualitative methods.

Conclusions/Recommendations

In summary, all three cases included in this article imply that the development of community teachers actively engaged in community schools is as important to teacher preparation as it is to the success and well-being of the students, teachers, and families they serve. Therefore, the authors believe that further quantitative and qualitative exploration of the intersection between these two concepts, community schools and community teachers, is critical to the field of preservice teacher education. If universities wish to establish an equity-pedagogy characteristic of Teacher Preparation 3.0, they need to authentically partner with schools and communities to engage in contextually meaningful practices. By making long-term commitments to working respectfully, responsively, and in mutually beneficial ways with communities, families, schools, and districts, university teacher preparation programs can help make high-quality community schools available for all children.
Emotions: More than a “Feeling”
Authors: Gomez Mary Louise , Lachuk Amy Johnson
Published: November 2021

What are emotions; and how do prospective and practicing teachers’ frame and understand them? How may teachers understand their own identities and those of their students as composed of intersectional dimensions of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, language background, abilities, and sexual orientation? What outcomes may occur as a result of these understandings? How may teacher educators respond when faced with these interpretations? Addressing these questions, we interrogate how emotions experienced by teachers influence how we see ourselves—our effectiveness; our relationships with students and families; and the curricula, pedagogies, and assessments we employ.

We draw on our own experiences as teacher educators, as well as extant research, to explore answers to these questions. Studies across diverse fields indicate that emotions are more than feelings or uncontrollable responses to situations; rather, they are socially and culturally constructed and agreed upon among people. As teacher educators, what intrigues us most about this research on emotion are the implications it has for creating culturally responsive and socially just teachers—teachers who are able to effectively teach youth who come from racial, cultural, class, and linguistic backgrounds different from their own.

We appeal to scholars from various traditions—philosophy, literature, cultural theory, composition and rhetoric, neuroscience, narrative inquiry, and teacher education—to question and elaborate what the term “others” may mean to teachers. Our twin goals are to demonstrate how often prospective and practicing teachers employ dichotomies of race, ethnicity, social class, language background/s, ability, and sexual orientation, among other dimensions of identity, to distinguish themselves from students and their families, and to begin exploring how teacher educators may provide alternatives to such imposed views.
Engaging Emotions in Teacher Education Research
Authors: Gomez Mary Louise , Lachuk Amy Johnson
Published: November 2021

Questions this chapter addresses include: What changes have teacher education programs attempted in the past in order to ameliorate the emotional struggles that prospective and new teachers undergo? What successes have been realized in these programs, and what criticisms have been made? How may teacher educators avoid what some scholars have called “false empathy” and encourage real compassion and knowledge of their students’ families, homes, and cultures so they may be more knowledgeable and skillful in communicating with students? How might future programs be improved in course work, field experiences, and other ongoing experiences of viewing, reading, and interacting with others? How can emotion be used as a mechanism for critical reflection about teachers’ identities and their understandings of youth identities?
The Impact and Role of Emotions in Schools for Teachers and Students with Complex Gender Identities
Authors: Miller Sj
Published: November 2021

Persons who have complex gender identities are among the most under-researched, under-theorized, and least understood populations in schools. Such persons are also the most vulnerable to experiencing various forms of violence. While interventions to support persons with complex gender identities are becoming increasingly evident in schools, scant attention has been paid to the role of emotion as a mechanism for supporting such youths’ learning. Since bodily and emotional responses cannot be generalized to all experiences, the responses of others who are not attuned to the experiences of persons with complex gender identities compel such youth to expend debilitating emotional labor.
What's Next?
Authors: Gomez Mary Louise
Published: November 2021

In this chapter, Mary Louise recounts Toni Morrison's (2017) arguments in The Origin of Others about what grounds peoples’ sorting and ranking of persons they consider unlike them in aspects of race, social class, gender-nonconforming identity, or language background. She recounts how her own Latinx family engaged in such conversation about people they saw as not conforming to expected standards of behavior in 1950's and 1960's small-town New England life. Although they were themselves derided for their social class and language background, they nonetheless held so-called “others” accountable for their religious, marital, employment, or cultural nonconformity. Mary Louise likens her family's cataloguing of the failures of “others” to contemporary perspectives on people seen as outside of those with privileged identities.
A Conceptual Framework of Teacher Motivation for Social Media Use
Authors: Hashim Ayesha K. , Carpenter Jeffrey P.
Published: November 2021

Teachers are increasingly turning to social media to facilitate informal opportunities for professional learning, yet we know little about the motivational factors that prompt teachers’ social media use. In this chapter, we propose a conceptual framework that researchers can use to unpack the varied motivational factors that lead teachers to engage with social media for professional learning. We argue that the extant literature on teachers’ social media use lacks cohesion in terms of identifying the full range of motivational factors that inform teacher practice and that can lead teachers to engage with social media spaces with different functionalities (e.g., curating content, building community, monetizing teacher resources). We draw on utility-based theory from economics to understand how teachers negotiate between different motivational preferences when deciding to engage with different social media platforms, foregrounding both individual and social preferences and how the context of districts, schools, grade levels, classrooms, and teachers’ backgrounds might influence teacher preferences and social media use. We conclude with a discussion of how this conceptual framework can inform future research.
Culturally Relevant Curriculum Materials in the Age of Social Media and Curation
Authors: Hu Sihua , Torphy Kaitlin T. , Opperman Amanda
Published: November 2021

Social media and other virtual resource pools (VRPs) have emerged as spaces wherein teachers can connect with other educators and acquire curriculum materials. Though teachers actively engage online, seeking and accessing alternative curriculum materials, little is known about how these efforts may impact culturally relevant education for students with diverse languages, literacies, and cultural practices in the classrooms. Situated in Ladson-Billings's work on culturally relevant pedagogy, this chapter outlines a framework for selecting and evaluating culturally relevant curriculum materials and applies it in a prominent virtual space: Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT). We find that there is a lack of opportunity for deep engagement in culturally relevant education as evidenced in resources found on TpT. This finding suggests unique challenges as well as opportunities for educators and researchers to leverage resources and knowledge from the cloud to the classroom. We conclude with a discussion of these challenges and opportunities from the perspectives of four groups of actors: (1) the creators and curators of curriculum materials, (2) the prosumers who proactively seek out resources and leverage VRPs, (3) the educators who commit to preparing or guiding teachers using VRPs, and (4) the researchers who study the virtual space for education quality and equity.
A Roadmap for Incorporating Online Social Media in Educational Research
Authors: Karimi Hamid , Derr Tyler , Torphy Kaitlin T. , Frank Kenneth A. , Tang Jiliang
Published: November 2021

Thanks to advancements in communication and online social media, there has been a surge of useful online educational resources across the Internet. In addition to supplementing educational materials, these resources could be used in varying education research and potentially advance the quality of education. Nevertheless, conducting such research projects requires using big data techniques and approaches to find meaningful resources and harnessing them in an effective way. In this chapter, we present a roadmap for how to incorporate online social media in education research projects. The roadmap consists of three major components: project initialization, data collection, and data utilization. Furthermore, we present some learned lessons, tips, and tricks, as well as case studies from the Teachers in Social Media project ( www.teachersinsocialmedia.com /). We believe this chapter can be used as a practical reference point for many researchers whose concern is connecting data to their education research endeavors.
Are Low-Cost Private Schools Worth the Investment? Evidence on Literacy and Mathematics Gains in Nairobi Primary Schools
Authors: Zuilkowski Stephanie Simmons , Piper Benjamin , Ong'ele Salome
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Low-cost private schools (LCPSs) represent a large and growing share of schools in many low- and middle-income countries, including Kenya. In some Nairobi neighborhoods, more than half of children attend LCPSs, despite policies providing free access to public education. Parents generally choose LCPSs because they believe they are higher quality, although there is little conclusive evidence supporting this belief.

Objective

In this study, we aim to add to the evidence available on the comparison between LCPSs and public schools by using student gains over time as our outcome, thus controlling for the initial level of achievement and instead examining improvement.

Participants

The randomly selected longitudinal sample was composed of 326 children attending 47 LCPSs and government schools in several of Nairobi's geographic zones. These children's literacy and numeracy outcomes were tracked over two academic years to determine their learning gains over time.

Research Design

We used residual gain scores—as opposed to cross-sectional measures—in English and Kiswahili literacy and mathematics, to compare the outcomes of students attending LCPSs and public primary schools across the first and second grades. We discuss how these schools impacted achievement over time.

Findings/Results

We found that these LCPSs did not produce significantly higher student growth than public schools under the status quo condition. However, among schools participating in an instructional improvement intervention supported by the United States Agency for International Development, LCPSs increased performance more than public schools in English, Kiswahili, and mathematics, with the largest differences in English.

Conclusions/Recommendations

These findings offer a cautionary note to the rapid expansion of LCPSs in low-resource settings. The fees paid to LCPSs by low-income households are often burdensome for families and, in some contexts, may not be worth the trade-offs that families make to afford them. On the other hand, the findings also suggest that low-cost private school teachers may respond more effectively than public school teachers to project-based support.
The Impact of Community College Baccalaureate Adoption on Associate Degree Production
Authors: Ortagus Justin C. , Kramer Dennis A. , Canché Manuel S. González , Fernandez Frank
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

As of 2018, a total of 19 states allow at least one community college to offer baccalaureate degrees. Previous researchers have suggested that community college baccalaureate (CCB) adoption will lead to a host of unintended consequences, including decreases in associate degree production.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This study empirically examines the impact of CCB adoption on associate degree production and adds to conversations surrounding the consequences of CCB adoption.

Research Design

We use a quantitative quasi-experimental research design to examine the effect of CCB adoption on associate degree production.

Findings/Results

When comparing adopting and non-adopting community colleges within the state of Florida, the authors find that the adoption of CCB degree programs has a positive impact on overall associate degree production, but this impact varies considerably according to the type of academic degree program.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Opponents of CCB legislation have argued that giving community colleges the authority to confer baccalaureate degrees will detract from the sub-baccalaureate institutional mission of community colleges, but our results suggest that the adoption of a CCB degree program is associated with an overall increase in associate degree production. Findings from this work should be an important consideration for policymakers seeking to increase baccalaureate degree production in addition to—not at the expense of—associate degree programs.
Student Self-Determination following Developmental Education Reform in Florida's Community Colleges
Authors: Brower Rebecca L. , Jones Tamara Bertrand , Hu Shouping , Park-Gaghan Toby J
Published: November 2021

Background

This multiple case study explores the self-determination needs of academically underprepared students. The context for our study was a sweeping redesign of developmental education (DE) in Florida's community colleges, state-level legislation Senate Bill 1720 (SB 1720), which made DE optional for many students.

Purpose of Study

The research questions for this study are: (1) How did a policy change in Florida's state colleges influence underprepared students’ feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness with campus personnel? (2) In their interactions with underprepared students in Florida's state colleges, what did campus personnel regard as the influence of a policy change on students’ feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness with staff?

Research Design

This study employs a multiple case study research design. The three cases represent nonexempt students in DE (the remainers), exempt students in DE (the compliers), and exempt students in first-level credit-bearing courses (the defiers). Over a four-year period, 36 two-day site visits to 21 institutions were completed. The research team conducted 13 individual interviews and 179 semistructured focus groups with 239 administrators, 284 faculty, 215 advisors, 23 support staff, and 378 students, resulting in data from 1,139 total participants. We developed an evolving coding framework with a priori and emergent codes. Initial propositions were developed during a within-case analysis, and then a cross-case analysis was performed to summarize patterns across all three cases. The trustworthiness of the qualitative interpretations was established through triangulation, member checking, and peer debriefing.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that students eligible to bypass DE enjoyed the autonomy of choosing their own course level, whereas those still required to take DE were stigmatized by their placement. For students able to enter directly into college-level coursework, feelings of competence and relatedness with campus personnel were closely tied to their academic performance in the more rigorous coursework. Three potential areas for institutional improvement were identified to support the self-determination needs of underprepared students: curriculum, professional development for campus personnel, and out-of-class interaction between staff and students. When students perform poorly in coursework, informational feedback that gives students specific hints about where and how to improve are far more effective than evaluative feedback alone. Professional development for faculty, advisors, and other campus personnel can help those who interact frequently with academically underprepared students better fulfill their self-determination needs. Students suggested that out-of-class interactions fostered stronger feelings of relatedness with campus personnel.