bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sponsors of Policy: A Network Analysis of Wealthy Elites, Their Affiliated Philanthropies, and Charter School Reform in Washington State
Authors: Au Wayne , Ferrare Joseph J.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Charter school policy has evolved into a major component of the current education reform movement in the United States. As of 2012, all but nine U.S. states allowed charter schools, and in one of those nine, Washington State, charter school legislation was passed by popular vote in November 2012. There is a substantial, if contested, research base focusing on charter school effectiveness, particularly related to test score achievement, as well as an equally contested literature base on charter school enrollment selectivity, student expulsions, and increased segregation in charter school populations.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to analyze the network of relations of policy actors surrounding the statewide campaign to pass the charter school Initiative 1240 in Washington State in order to better understand how wealthy individuals and their associated philanthropic organizations influence educational policy.

Research Design

Making use of available tax records, public election information, individual and organizational websites, and institutional and foundation databases, this study uses simple directed graphing techniques from social network analysis to analyze the complex relationships and affiliations of policy actors relative to the campaign to pass charter school Initiative 1240 in the state of Washington.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study concludes that, compared to the average voter in Washington, an elite group of wealthy individuals, either directly through individual donations or indirectly through their affiliated philanthropic organizations, wielded disproportionate influence over the outcome of the charter school initiative in the state, thereby raising serious concerns about the democratic underpinnings of an education policy that impacts all of the children in Washington State. This study also concludes that elite individuals make use of local nonprofit organizations as a mechanism to advance their education policy agenda by funding those nonprofits through the philanthropic organizations affiliated with those same wealthy elites. In light of these conclusions, the authors recommend that a mechanism for more democratic accountability be developed relative to education policy campaigns, initiatives, and legislation.
Accountability: Antecedents, Power, and Processes
Authors: Meyer Heinz-Dieter , Tröhler Daniel , Labaree David F. , Hutt Ethan L.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In the United States and abroad, public education is changing as the rhetoric of “accountability” is becoming accepted as the self-evident and self-explanatory rationale for momentous policy shifts. Epitomized by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the U.S. government's Race to the Top, accountability is becoming a pervasive normalizing discourse, legitimizing historical shifts in educational policy from a social and cultural project of facilitating democratic citizenship to an economic project of engendering usable skills and “competences.”

Purpose

The purpose of this special issue is to provide context and perspective on these momentous shifts.

Research Design

The papers point to historic antecedents, highlight core ideas, and identify changes in the balance of power between domestic and global policy makers. The authors are interested in understanding the process by which the new policy frameworks have been constructed and legitimized and how they have changed the accepted “definition of the situation.”

Conclusions/Recommendations

An important aspect of these changes are three long-term trends: homogenizing the heterogeneous reality of education; shifting power from locally embedded education professionals to a global elite of economists and statisticians; and the move from soft guidance to hard mandates in an increasingly centralized system of governance.
Precollege Exposure to Racial/Ethnic Difference and First-Year College Students’ Racial Attitudes
Authors: Bowman Nicholas A. , Stewart Dafina-Lazarus
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Despite burgeoning racial and ethnic heterogeneity within the United States, many students grow up in racially homogeneous schools and neighborhoods. This lack of interracial interaction appears to play a substantial role in shaping students’ racial attitudes and world views upon entering college.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

The aim of the study was to examine the relationships among multiple forms of precollege exposure to racial/ethnic diversity and racial attitudes (e.g., perceptions of workplace discrimination) upon entering college.

Research Design

A quantitative survey examined attitudes, precollege environments, and other indicators among 3,924 entering first-year college students (with approximately equal numbers of Asian Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites) at 28 U.S. colleges and universities. Structural equation modeling analyses were conducted on the full sample as well as several racial/ethnic groups separately.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Findings indicated that exposure to racial/ethnic difference in students’ precollege neighborhoods and schools predict high school interracial friendships, which in turn predict their complex racial attitudes. The multigroup analyses further demonstrate that the relationships between interracial friendships and multiple racial attitudes are nonsignificant among White students, but significant for all other groups. These findings have implications for the promotion of meaningful curricular and cocurricular diversity interventions both before and during college.
Reflections on the Gordon Commission
Authors: Haertel Edward
Published: November 2021

Background

This brief reflection on the work of the Gordon Commission calls out significant themes and implications found in the various papers authored by the commissioners and other scholars, especially those included in this special issue of Teachers College Record.

Purpose

The forward-looking vision of the Gordon Commission is contrasted with contemporary teaching and testing practices to highlight implications for new assessment purposes and methods. It is argued that a new vision of assessment is inseparable from a new vision of teaching and learning. To realize this new vision, some current practices, especially uses of testing to sort and select students and to rank teachers and schools, will need to be greatly attenuated or even abandoned.

Research Design

This is a narrative review expressing the author's own point of view. No empirical findings are cited.

Conclusions

A conservative reading of the Gordon Commission's work might suggest that educational assessment tomorrow should function much as it does today, only better. A closer reading, however, suggests a more radical view. Assessment FOR education must break free from the constraints of standardization and consequential comparison.
Expulsion Litigation and the Limits of in Loco Parentis, 1860-1960
Authors: Gelber Scott
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Legal scholars often contrast the litigiousness of contemporary American higher education with a bygone era characterized by near-absolute respect for academic authority. According to this account, a doctrine of “academic deference” insulated colleges until the 1960s, when campus protests and new federal regulations dramatically heightened the intensity of legal oversight. This study tests that conventional wisdom, and its underlying assumption about the origins of student rights, by analyzing expulsion suits during the 100 years before 1960.

Purpose

Faculty and administrators tend to question if external legal pressure can play a constructive role in debates about higher education. This predisposition tempts us to invoke an earlier era of in loco parentis in order to portray institutional autonomy as a time-honored source of academic achievement. By highlighting overlooked state statutes (especially regarding public institutions) and contractual obligations (especially regarding private institutions), this study examines whether the power to discipline students in loco parentis actually triumphed prior to the 1960s.

Research Design

The study presents a historical analysis of the 44 college expulsion cases that were reported between 1860 and 1960. Examination of reported decisions was supplemented by archival research regarding landmark cases.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study concludes that courts regularly reinstated expelled students during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These cases indicate that the power to act in loco parentis was limited by a countervailing tradition that emphasized college access and compelled institutions to provide due process prior to dismissal. This early strain of decisions laid the groundwork for the more expansive view of student rights that emerged during the 20th century. This finding encourages faculty and administrators to recognize the legal traditions and student dissenters that helped to enshrine accessibility as a defining feature of American higher education.
Institutionalizing in Loco Parentis after Gott v. Berea College (1913)
Authors: Loss Christopher P.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The institutionalization of in loco parentis in the wake of Gott v. Berea College (1913) marked a major turning point in the evolution of student management theory and practice. Focusing on the crucial decade of the 1920s, when American higher education first became a mass enterprise, this study explores the interaction of ideas and institutions by retracing the constitutive relationship between in loco parentis and the development of student services and programs targeted to keeping students in school.

Purpose/Objective

Scholars have tended to think of in loco parentis as primarily a tool of social control used to discipline misbehaving students. This study offers a different interpretation by taking seriously the doctrine's basic terms—namely, administrators’ and faculties’ role as “parents” and students’ role as “children”—and by highlighting the enduring institutional transformations created in the 1920s to help reduce student attrition.

Research Design

This study offers a historical analysis of the changing meanings and widening jurisdiction of in loco parentis during the 1920s.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This study finds that changes in the legal definition of in loco parentis following Gott v. Berea College (1913) triggered a revolution in student services that helped lay the foundation for the creation of the modern undergraduate experience and for the education of the whole student.
State Higher Education Performance Funding for Community Colleges: Diverse Effects and Policy Implications
Authors: Tandberg David A. , Hillman Nichola , Barakat Mohamed
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Community colleges are central to the United States’ college completion goals. A popular strategy pushed by a number of influential policy organizations and foundations is a policy of tying state funding to community college completions, otherwise known simply as performance funding. This is happening despite little to no evidence that such a strategy actually increases institutional performance.

Purpose

This study asks: To what extent does the introduction of performance funding programs impact two-year degree completion among participating states?

Population/Participants

We created a unique panel data set for the period 1990 through 2010, using states as our primary unit of analysis. The data set contains 1,050 total observations, drawing from a range of postsecondary data sources.

Research Design

We used a quasi-experimental regression technique called difference-indifferences regression technique. We also included in our model multiple control variables and year and state fixed effects.

Findings/Results

We find that the program had no effect on average and mixed results for the individual states where performance funding was associated with lower completions in six states, greater completions in four states, and inconclusive patterns in nine states.

Conclusions

We conclude that performance funding is no “silver bullet” for improving community college completions; rather, in some cases, it may interfere with national completion goals. We recommend that state policy makers seek out evidence-based alternatives for improving community college completions.
The Fragmentation of Metropolitan Public School Districts and the Segregation of American Schools: A Longitudinal Analysis
Authors: Richards Meredith P. , Stroub Kori J.
Published: November 2021

Context

Scholars have increasingly raised concerns about the “fragmentation” or proliferation of metropolitan public school districts, citing the potential for fragmentation to facilitate racial/ethnic segregation by permitting individuals to sort more efficiently across district boundaries. In addition, scholars have expressed particular concern about the rapid growth of charter districts and their potential to exacerbate segregation.

Purpose of Study

In this study, we provide initial evidence on the effect of public school district fragmentation on the trajectory of racial/ethnic segregation in metropolitan areas, attending to the differential effects of regular school district fragmentation as well as charter district fragmentation.

Research Design

Using NCES Common Core data for the 2002–2010 school years, we computed measures of regular public school district fragmentation and charter district fragmentation as well as nine measures of racial/ethnic segregation for all 366 U.S. metropolitan areas (3 geographic x 3 racial/ethnic decompositions). We then estimated a series of multilevel longitudinal models predicting change in each measure of segregation as a function of regular and charter school district fragmentation.

Results

We found that school district fragmentation is unrelated to the overall level of segregation in a metropolitan area. More fragmented metropolitan areas have higher levels of segregation across districts than less fragmented metropolitan areas; however, they have lower levels of segregation within districts and equivalent levels of total metropolitan segregation. Likewise, school district fragmentation was not associated with worsening segregation over time or with attenuation of the secular trend toward declining segregation. More fragmented metropolitan areas had smaller declines in between-district segregation over the study period than less fragmented metropolitan areas; however, they had equivalent declines in within-district and total metropolitan segregation. In addition, charter district fragmentation was unrelated to the level or trajectory of school segregation in a metropolitan area.

Conclusions

Our results provide a somewhat more sanguine assessment of school district fragmentation than previous research. We found that the fragmentation of regular public school districts serves to shift the geographic scale of segregation from within districts to between districts; however, fragmentation does not exacerbate metropolitan racial/ethnic segregation. In addition, despite the rapid growth of charter districts, we find no evidence that charter district fragmentation has worsened overall metropolitan racial/ethnic segregation. Moreover, metropolitan areas are not experiencing the “fragmentation” of their traditional public school districts; rather, traditional school districts are consolidating despite increasing enrollment.
Engagement in Out-of-School Time: How Youth Become Engaged in the Arts
Authors: Hoxie Anne-Marie E. , Debellis Lisa M.
Published: November 2021

This chapter describes an after-school visual and performing arts program serving middle and high school youth operated in partnership between a community-based organization and two schools in Brooklyn, New York. Data collected on the program provides evidence of participants’ identity exploration and development of positive relationships and social competencies
The Role of Gratitude in Fostering School Bonding
Authors: Furlong Michael J. , Froh Jeffrey J. , Muller Meagan E. , Gonzalez Victoria
Published: November 2021

A body of research has emerged during the past three decades focusing on how students engage in the schooling process and the broader positive developmental outcomes associated with high levels of engagement and lower involvement in high-risk behaviors. This chapter suggests that gratitude might offer a unique contribution for understanding how affective engagement and positive relationships could enhance student school bonding and thereby student social-emotional and academic outcomes.
“The Local Trap”: Problematizing Place, Education, and Policy
Authors: Gulson Kalervo N.
Published: November 2021

This chapter aims to extend the repertoire of understandings about place and policy in place-based education with a focus on ideas of space, mobility, and belonging. The view provided by this extended perspective leads to the question: How does mobility challenge and provide new ways of thinking about place-based education?
Afterschool: Growth! (The All Stars Way)
Authors: Gildin Bonny L.
Published: November 2021

This chapter shares a model of afterschool development created by the not-for-profit All Stars Project. Central to the model are self-conscious and collective acts of performing and pretending that help youth living in high poverty, urban areas grow as learners and builders of their lives and their communities.

Everything is a performance… not to say that it's not real. It's very much real, but that's the aspect the All Stars brings to it, that in order to make it real, in order to make some of your dreams real, you have to perform, and as you perform, you start to realize, “I don't know, I can do this.” (Jasmine Morrison, 32, All Stars Project Alumna)

What if all the kids currently failing in school pretended to be good learners? What if all the adults—teachers, administrators, parents—played along and pretended that the kids were school achievers, heading for college?… We believe that if such a national “performance” were created, the education crisis in America would be over. (Newman & Fulani, 2011, p. 1)
Research with a Transformative Activist Agenda: Creating the Future through Education for Social Change
Authors: Vianna Eduardo , Stetsenko Anna
Published: November 2021

A transformative activist stance is a theoretically grounded model for educational research based on a radically revised theory of human development and learning. Its purpose is to advance a transformative agenda that contributes to the creation of equitable futures for students, especially those from disadvantaged populations. A collaborative project conducted in a group home for youth in foster care provides a dramatic illustration for this approach.
Stuck in School: How Social Context Shapes School Choice for Inner-City Students
Authors: Condliffe Barbara F. , Boyd Melody L. , Deluca Stefanie
Published: November 2021

Background

High school choice policies attempt to improve the educational outcomes of poor and minority students by allowing access to high school beyond neighborhood boundaries. These policies assume that given a choice, families will be able to select a school that supports their child's learning and promotes educational attainment. However, research on the effects of public school choice programs on the academic achievement of disadvantaged students is mixed, suggesting that families do not necessarily respond to these programs in ways that policymakers intend.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to identify how family and neighborhood contexts interact with public school choice policies to shape the educational opportunities of inner-city students. Specifically, we ask: What criteria are used to choose schools? What are the implications of these school choice decisions for students’ future educational and occupational opportunities?

Research Design

We use data from interviews and fieldwork conducted with 118 low-income African American youth ages 15–24 who attended Baltimore City Public Schools at some point during their high school career. Research on school choice tends to rely on data from parents, and we offer a unique contribution by asking youth themselves about their experiences with school choice.

Conclusions

Although school choice policies assume that parents will guide youths’ decision about where to go to high school, the majority of youth in our sample were the primary decision makers in the high school choice process. Additionally, these youth made these choices under considerable constraints imposed by the district policy and by their family, peers, and academic background. As a result, the youth often selected a school within a very limited choice set and chose schools that did not necessarily maximize their educational opportunity. Our results demonstrate that school choice policies must take into account the social context in which educational decisions are made in order to maximize chances for students’ individual academic achievement and to decrease inequality by race and social class.
Teaching as Jesus Making: The Hidden Curriculum of Christ in Schooling
Authors: Burke Kevin J. , Segall Avner
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The ideas of teaching as salvation and teacher-as-martyr are not new concepts. Prior research, however, has largely failed to explore the historical and cultural religious roots that continue to inform the ways in which teachers are constructed. That is, though prior work has engaged with thinking about religion and thinking about teachers as saviors, little work has been done to uncover the hidden curriculum of teaching that positions teachers as versions of Christ in the public school classroom.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Here we highlight the fact that certain elements inherent in the act of public teaching have their roots in Christian, particularly Biblical, thinking. Such connections highlight the religiosity in teaching, regardless of whether a teacher is a Christian believer.

Research Design

The work is an analytic essay, drawing on critical traditions in cultural studies and curriculum theory.

Findings/Results

We illustrate that although we think of teaching as a secular activity and assume that religion has been expunged from public, including teacher, education, the sediments of religion remain present in how the teacher learns to imagine, construct, and enact his or her work as teacher as savior and martyr.
The “Two-Way Street” of Having an Impact: A Democratic School's Attempt to Build a Broad Counterhegemonic Alternative
Authors: Meshulam Assaf
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Critical education studies tries to make sense of the relationship between education and differential power in an unequal society and to what degree schools impact the social order. A premise in this field is that a fundamental aim of critical education is exposing unequal social, cultural, and economic power relations and engaging in social action that transcends the setting of the classroom and school. Counterhegemonic schools are thus generally characterized by an aspiration to be meaningful beyond the school community and a commitment to social transformation.

Purpose/Focus of Study

The study examines a unique bilingual, multicultural school in Israel/Palestine in its struggle to be broadly meaningful and sustainable by opening up enrollment beyond its binational (Jewish-Palestinian) community. In particular, the study analyzes the impact of incorporating external students on the school's counterhegemonic curricula, pedagogy, and dynamics, as well as the implications for the transformative potential of bottom-up democratic education initiatives in the absence of accompanying policy change more generally.

Research Design

The findings draw on data collected in a broader qualitative case study on multicultural, bilingual schools educating for democracy and social justice in different national, political, and cultural contexts. Data were collected and analyzed from semistructured open-ended individual interviews with school staff, parents, and founders; field observations; and document analysis.

Findings

The primary finding of this research is the paradox of being impacted while making an impact: The school's attempt to infiltrate the hegemony and expand and sustain its social impact led to the infiltration of external goals, interests, and power relations into its counterhegemonic agenda, curricula and pedagogy, and governance. This in turn undermined transformativity and transcultural border-crossing potential at the school and triggered a neoliberal process of commodification. Yet it also emerged that students still succeed in crossing national and religious identity-borders and in overcoming hegemonic perspectives of their essentialized identities.

Conclusions

Many obstacles stand between a counterhegemonic school and being socially meaningful, including sociohistorical and political factors. No less important, however, are the broader structural aspects to creating a space in which transformative schools can succeed. Although bottom-up attempts may push hegemonic forms to incorporate certain aspects of their vision, they cannot have meaningful and widespread impact if unaccompanied by broad support and action at the policy level and if they do not become organic parts of a larger transformative agenda.
Using Data to Alter Instructional Practice: The Mediating Role of Coaches and Professional Learning Communities
Authors: Marsh Julie A. , Bertrand Melanie , Huguet Alice
Published: November 2021

Background

Despite increased access to student learning data, scholars have demonstrated that teachers do not always know how to use these data in ways that lead to deep changes in instruction and often lack skills and knowledge to interpret results and develop solutions. In response, administrators have invested in instructional coaches, data coaches, and professional learning communities (PLCs) to support teachers in this process. Despite their popularity, there is limited research on the ways in which coaches and PLCs mediate teachers’ use of data and the various types of expertise brought to bear on this process.

Purpose

This exploratory study examined how working with a coach or PLC shaped teachers’ responses to data in six middle schools and the factors that influenced the activities and effects of coaches and PLCs. Our intent was to deeply examine processes and identify key constructs and relationships to guide future research and practice.

Research Design

Our research involved a year-long comparative case study of six low-performing middle schools in four districts that supported teacher data use via literacy coaches, data coaches, or PLCs. We draw on cultural historical activity theory and data from 92 interviews, 6 focus groups, 20 observations of meetings, and monthly surveys of case study teachers (15), coaches (4), and PLC lead teachers (2).

Findings

We found that coaches and PLCs played important roles in mediating teachers’ responses to data and were often associated with instances in which teachers used data to alter their instructional delivery (as opposed to surface-level changes in materials and topics). Further, the dynamic relationship between vertical expertise (an individual's knowledge and skills) and horizontal expertise (knowledge that is co-created through interactions and movement across contexts) may help explain the ways in which PLCs and coaches facilitated deeper level changes in pedagogy. Finally, dialogue was a central mediating practice, and school leadership and the district-level context shaped the possibility for change.

Conclusions

Our research adds conceptual clarity to what types of expertise may be needed to ensure that teachers respond productively to data. The study suggests that administrators should consider multiple facets of expertise when designing interventions, recruiting coaches, assembling PLCs, and developing professional development for coaches and teacher leaders. The centrality of dialogue also suggests the need for policies and structures allowing for uninterrupted time for educators to collectively reflect on data.
Prompting Reflections for Integrating Self-Regulation into Teacher Technology Education
Authors: Michalsky Tova , Kramarski Bracha
Published: November 2021

Background

Technology represents a major topic in educational research. Nevertheless, a gap in the research remains concerning how teachers can bring technology into the classroom. This study focuses on the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) framework, which aims to consolidate the multidisciplinary professional knowledge related to technology, pedagogy, and content that teachers need so that they can teach and students can learn effectively using technology tools.

Purpose

The goal of the present study was to investigate the value of modification reflection prompts (“think ahead”) as a complementary reflective framework during the teacher preparatory program, beyond the more traditional judgment reflection prompts (“think back”). In particular, we examined how preservice science teachers may capitalize on learning from modification prompts versus judgment prompts versus both (“think back” and “think ahead”), compared with learning from generic prompts (“stop and think”) based on the IMPROVE model oriented to TPCK. We examined these four treatments’ effects on preservice teachers’ actual design of science lessons and development of their own self-reflection abilities.

Participants

Participants were 199 first-year preservice science teachers in their preparatory programs at a university in central Israel.

Research Design

We created a quasi-experimental opportunity for four groups of preservice science teachers to systematically contemplate ready-made TPCK-oriented lesson designs. Each used one of four different reflective methods (the independent variable): modification, judgment, combined modification+judgment, or generic prompts. Then we examined the differential contribution of these treatment methods to the two dependent variables: (1) preservice teachers’ skills for designing actual science lessons and (2) their judgment-type and modification-type self-reflection ability regarding the planning, monitoring, and evaluation phases of their lesson-design process.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data were scored by coding schemes and were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance and follow-up analyses of variance with repeated measures.

Findings

Results indicated that preservice teachers who contemplated a combination of both judgment and modification reflections in treatment improved more in their lesson-design skills and in their self-reflection ability (of both types at the three phases), compared with preservice teachers who contemplated only a single type of reflective prompt (generic or only judgment or modification). Lasting effects (after a semester without the IMPROVE model, prompts, or TPCK focus) revealed that the combined approach continued to significantly outperform the single approaches.

Recommendations

The current study reinterprets the instructional-reflective framework of teacher education programs to include modification reflection too as a means of developing preservice teachers’ capacity to integrate technology in their lesson designs.
Examining the Parent Trigger as a Strategy for School Reform and Parental Engagement
Authors: Rogers John , Lubienski Christopher , Scott Janelle , Welner Kevin G.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Parent trigger policies have become a popular option in the education reform toolbox, giving parents the potential ability to induce substantial structural changes at their local public school. This reform approach emerged in California during the Great Recession, and has since proliferated to a number of states, spurred on by policy advocates, philanthropic funders, and associated reform organizations. These state-level policies allow a majority of parents at low-performing schools to petition to force school transformation through conversion to charter school status, replacement of school leadership and/or staff, or other corrective actions expected to improve outcomes at the school.

Purpose

This analysis considers the emergence, evidentiary basis, and potential of parent trigger policies. In particular, we focus on the policy, political and social circumstances in which parent trigger legislation emerged in California, the efficacy of the school improvement levers on which it draws, and the underlying assumptions about democratic engagement that inform the approach.

Research Design

This policy analysis draws on multiple forms of evidence to examine the efficacy of the parent trigger approach for school improvement and community engagement. The initial examination of the emergence of parent trigger considers public policy positions, media statements, and press accounts to trace the nuances of this policy landscape. Then, in lieu of useful research evidence on parent trigger itself, we turn to the research literature on the remedies that parent trigger tends to adopt, including studies in school choice, charter schools, and various school improvement strategies, as well as the implications for parental empowerment.

Findings

Reviews of extant evidence on policy remedies implicit and explicit in parent trigger indicate that, although parent trigger may have emerged from a deep-seated desire to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged children, it is unlikely to actually improve the educational quality of schools, given that the overall effects of these policy interventions are mixed, at best, and parent trigger adds another element of instability to already unstable school communities in disadvantaged areas.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our analysis suggests that parent trigger tends to assume an aggregative model of democratic action drawn from a market-style economic premise. Unless policy makers promote a more deliberative model of community engagement, empowerment, and school governance, it is likely that parent trigger could contribute to continual corruption of democratic institutions and avenues for school governance.
English Language Learner Classmates and the Classroom Social Skills of Students with Disabilities
Authors: Gottfried Michael A. , Polikoff Morgan S.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Though the development of social skills in kindergarten is critical, a research gap exists in how the context of the general education classroom may influence the social skills outcomes of students with disabilities: None have considered the role of peer effects in this domain. This gap is critical to address, as multiple high-needs groups are increasingly present in the same general education classroom settings.

Purpose/Objective

This study asks two key research questions: (1) In kindergarten, to what extent do the classroom social skills outcomes of children with disabilities differ based on the number of ELL classmates? (2) In kindergarten, to what extent do the classroom social skills outcomes of ELL students differ based on the number of classmates with disabilities?

Population/Participants

The data are sourced from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class (ECLS-K), which is a nationally representative sample of students, teachers, and schools. Information was first collected from kindergartners (as well as parents, teachers, and school administrators) from U.S. kindergarten programs. This study utilizes data collected at the fall and spring of kindergarten.

Research Design

This study combines secondary data analyses and quasi-experimental methods. There are three social skills outcomes: (1) approaches to learning, (2) interpersonal skills, and (3) self control. The study begins with a baseline, linear regression model. To address issues pertaining to omitted variable bias, the study employs multilevel fixed effects modeling.

Findings

The coefficients indicate that students with disabilities tend to have improved social skills with an increase in the number of ELL classmates. The effects remain significant even after accounting for multiple omitted variable biases. Notably, the reverse relationship does not hold: The number of classmates with disabilities has no significant influence on the outcomes of ELL students.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This research offers more in-depth insight into how the classroom context and the effects of classmates may have a unique relationship for specific high-needs groups such as students with disabilities—a strand of research in this area that is often overlooked. School practices can thus be guided by determining not simply if one group of students performs better or worse on average, but rather by asking, better or worse for whom in particular?
Research on Curricular Development for Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics and Science
Authors: Kinzie Mable B. , Whittaker Jessica Vick , Mcguire Pat , Lee Youngju , Kilday Carolyn
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

As increasing attention is paid to preparing students to succeed in school, the development and adoption of research-based curricula have become progressively more important. However, many curricular designs lack a basis in scientific evidence; research and curricular design are frequently treated as two separate enterprises.

Purpose/Objective

In this paper, we present the Research on Curriculum Design (RCD) model, first advanced by Clements in 2007, with results from its application to the design and iterative development of pre-kindergarten mathematics and science curricula.

Research Design

RCD is an example of design-based research, with the additional specific goals of the production of an effective curriculum and the evolution of theoretical guidelines to inform future curricular designs. Our implementation spanned two years and involved iterative development and testing of two, year-long curricula.

Findings/Results

Application of RCD methods informed our understandings of the target population, the knowledge and skills to be developed, and the theoretical and research-based models that guided the designs. Subsequent iterative development and evaluation in five pre-K classrooms enabled refinement of the curricular design, as well as the evolution of design guidelines useful for informing future curriculum development efforts. A culminating test of the resulting curricula in eight pre-K classrooms suggests the success of the RCD approach, yielding high-quality, high-fidelity teacher implementation, with teacher fidelity and curricular dosage predicting students’ mathematics learning gains across the year.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Results support the value of the RCD model for achieving research-based curricula that have the potential to effectively support teachers in their practice and positively impact children's early learning.
Languages across Borders: Social Network Development in an Adolescent Two-Way Language Program
Authors: Kibler Amanda K. , Atteberry Allison , Hardigree Christine N. , Salerno April S.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Two-way dual-language programs have become an increasingly popular educational model in the United States for language minority and majority speakers, with a small but growing number of programs at the high school level. Little is known, however, about how adolescents’ social networks develop in the contexts of these programs.

Purpose/Objective

This study examines how a two-way, dual language enrichment program for Spanish-language learner (SLL) and English-language learner (ELL) adolescents influenced students’ social networks with peers of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Setting

The program took place in a south-Atlantic state at a suburban/rural high school that has substantial within-school linguistic segregation.

Population/Participants

Program participants included 20 students: 10 English-dominant learners of Spanish, and 10 Spanish-dominant learners of English.

Intervention/Program

The two-way dual-language program was a voluntary extracurricular program in which adolescent Spanish-dominant ELLs and English-dominant SLLs participated in collaborative and student-led bilingual activities designed to foster the sharing of cross-linguistic expertise and cross-cultural knowledge over a seven-month period.

Research Design

In this mixed-methods study, student-level Likert-scale data is analyzed quantitatively and supported through analysis of qualitative interview responses and observational field notes. Quantitative results compare ELL and SLL participants’ demographic and baseline social characteristics, before-and-after social networks, the changing nature of reported relationships over time as a function of language status, and magnitude of growth in relationships’ strength before and after the program. Qualitative results examine the qualities and conditions of these relationships and the conditions under which they developed.

Findings/Results

Results suggest that despite participants’ demographic differences, ELL and SLL students in the dual-language program reported building new, strengthened, and mutually recognized relationships, particularly with students of different language backgrounds who worked together within long-term collaborative small groups.

Conclusions/Recommendations

When students are provided with a carefully designed instructional and ecological context that provides authentic purposes for using language and building peer relationships, this research suggests that both ELLs and SLLs may be able to build linguistically integrated social networks.
When to Begin? Socioeconomic and Racial/Ethnic Differences in Financial Planning, Preparing, and Saving for College
Authors: Hillman Nicholas , Gast Melanie J. , George-Jackson Casey
Published: November 2021

Background

With college tuition and student loan debt rising, high school students and their families are increasingly concerned about “how to” pay for college. To address this, federal/state policy makers encourage individuals to financially prepare for college early in their child's life. Drawing from social reproduction theory, we anticipate wide inequalities in who engages in college financial preparations and savings and when they begin these activities.

Purpose

This study updates and extends the literature on how families financially prepare for college.

Data

High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), a nationally representative sample of 9th grade students who began high school in 2009.

Research Design

We use logistic and multinomial regression to estimate four different outcomes: (1) whether the family plans to help the student pay for college; (2) whether the family has financially prepared for college; (3) whether the family has opened a college savings account; and (4) when families financially prepare for college (kindergarten, elementary, or secondary school).

Results

Our results have implications for social reproduction theory as we find that socioeco-nomically privileged families have greater likelihoods of financially preparing their children for college before or soon after their children enter formal schooling.

Conclusions

Current policy efforts to encourage college financial preparation may disproportionately benefit already-privileged families and likely exacerbate educational inequalities.
Continuing a Conversation with Maxine Greene in Comics
Authors: Sousanis Nick , Suzuki Daiyu
Published: November 2021

Purpose

To illuminate the concepts of aesthetic experience and wide-awakeness in the philosophy of Maxine Greene by using the aesthetic approaches she discussed - in this case, using the comic book form as a means of visually embodying and extending her ideas.

Setting

In Maxine Greene's living room, the view through the window, and on the sidewalk across the street from her apartment—under the tree that she looked upon each day.

Research Design

Philosophical-aesthetic inquiry.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This philosophical-aesthetic inquiry has left us with more questions than answers as we engaged in an imaginative dialogue with Maxine Greene. Maxine lived her philosophy not just in her work, but in her daily life. Her lived example leaves us with some of the following questions: How do we—as educators, researchers, and philosophers—reconcile the separation between our intellectual lives and personal lives? What does it mean to cultivate our imaginative capacities for social change? How do we see the unseen? How do we see movements in what seems static, and changes in what seems permanent? How do we refuse to accept given “truth” as true and so-called “reality” as real? How do we attend our world anew each day? Maxine's method of asking, rather than answering, opened her to seeing greater possibilities in her world. And it is this attitude for seeing and for asking rather than any “ism” that we take into our own work and seek to convey with this piece.
The Potential of Peer Robots to Assist Human Creativity in Finding Problems and Problem Solving
Authors: Okita Sandra
Published: November 2021

Many technological artifacts (e.g., humanoid robots, computer agents) consist of biologically inspired features of human-like appearance and behaviors that elicit a social response. The strong social components of technology permit people to share information and ideas with these artifacts. As robots cross the boundaries between humans and machines, the features of human interactions can be replicated to reveal new insights into the role of social relationships in learning and creativity. Peer robots can be designed to create ideal circumstances that enable new ways for students to reflect, reason, and learn. This, in turn, has increased expectations that robots and computer agents will enhance human learning and complement people's physical, social, and cognitive capabilities. This paper explores how peer-like robots and robotic systems may help students learn and engage in creative ways of thinking.