bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Probing Teachers’ Lesson Planning: Promoting Metacognition
Authors: Eilam Billie
Published: November 2021

Classrooms are complex systems, with dynamic interactions of different kinds among their composing varied elements. Such complex interactions lead to the system's unpredictable emergent learning behaviors. To support teachers’ lesson planning and monitoring in the complex environment of classrooms, the present article examines the core metacognitive skills of goal-directed lesson planning and monitoring and presents a novel tool for scaffolding teachers’ self-regulated instruction by increasing their awareness of goals, activities, discrepancy cues, and instructional time management. The chapter describes a qualitative pilot study with two experienced teachers working in a secondary school and a particular teachers’ professional development program. It investigates their utilization of this metacognitive scaffolding tool that has been previously validated as promoting ninth graders’ metacognitive awareness and adapted for teachers’ use. This Lesson Planning-Monitoring Scaffold (LPMS) supported teachers’ lesson planning (including activities sequences, learning settings, and time management), monitoring of plans’ enactment, and postlesson as well as yearly reflections on lessons’ goal achievement and tool's support. The rationale and structure of this metacognitive tool are described, and teachers’ use of the tool is analyzed. Finally, implications for future research on the LPMS and its uses are discussed.
Teaching and Learning Hand in Hand: Adaptive Teaching and Self-Regulated Learning
Authors: Randi Judi
Published: November 2021

This article presents case studies of two novice teachers and their mentors who, without formal knowledge of self-regulation theory, established a classroom environment that promoted self-regulated learning. This case was drawn from a larger descriptive study of novice teachers learning to integrate a student-centered visual literacy instructional approach into their literacy curriculum. This visual literacy approach requires teachers to adapt their teaching to students by building on students’ responses to works of art and to generate moment-to-moment instructional sequences and interactions during instruction. The two cases reported here were selected as exemplars because these teachers created opportunities for students to adapt themselves to instruction and to draw upon self-regulated learning strategies. These cases provided the context in which to examine the dynamic relationship between teaching and learning, and explore how teachers develop students’ capacity to adapt to the learning environment and how students’ own self-regulated learning, in turn, contributes to and enables adaptive teaching. Through classroom observations, teaching artifacts, and teachers’ own explanations of their instructional decisions and dynamic teaching practices, this study explored how teachers developed adaptive teaching strategies as well as students’ self-regulated learning within the constraints and affordances of an instructional approach that required teachers to follow their students’ lead rather than their own lesson plans or scripts. Using examples from these case studies, this article builds theory about how students’ self-regulation facilitates teaching.
Curriculum Deliberations over Time: A Nexus of Teacher Dilemmas, Questions, Experimentation, and Agency
Authors: Sawyer Richard
Published: November 2021

This article examines 24 teachers’ perceptions of their curriculum and curricular choices over their first 11 years of teaching. Adaptive expertise and teacher visioning were used as a conceptual frameworks. A theme of diversity runs through the alternate route elementary teachers. Some of these teachers from diverse backgrounds promoted a social justice curriculum, but their teaching skills often lagged behind their goals for societal change. Eventually, on both the alternate route elementary and secondary levels, some of these teachers valued and implemented an integrated and interdisciplinary curriculum. The college-prepared teachers focused more on the creation of integrated learning environments on the elementary level and the adaptation of content to learning on the secondary level. Some of the college-prepared secondary teachers used more learning-centered approaches in all their classes from the start of their careers. Others were more influenced by the classroom context (the level of the class or the subject matter) and initially were more innovative in their beginning or “basic skills” classes than in their advanced classes. Most of the teachers in both preparation groups who remained in the classroom began to develop a sense of adaptive expertise.
Coping Strategies of International Chinese Undergraduates in Response to Academic Challenges in U.S. Colleges
Authors: Heng Tang T.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

One in three international students in the U.S. comes from China, propelled by a steep increase in undergraduate enrollment in U.S. colleges. This phenomenon has been accompanied by negative media discourse that portrays them as needy, passive, and unable to cope with their new educational demands.

Purpose/Objective

Using a hybrid sociocultural framework that privileges student agency and locates students within their sociocultural milieu, this study investigated strategies Chinese international undergraduates used to cope with challenges they faced in U.S. colleges.

Population/Participants

Eighteen participants—nine freshmen and nine sophomores— from three liberal arts colleges situated in an urban context took part in the study.

Research Design

This qualitative study followed participants through one academic year. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, engaged in three semi-structured interviews at the beginning, middle, and end of their academic year, and wrote four journal prompts.

Findings/Results

Results reveal that student strategies cluster around themes of agency and self-reliance, as well as outreach and support. Students spent more time studying, used a range of learning techniques, developed self-help and psychological strategies, tapped into institutional and technological support, and reached out to teachers and peers for help.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Students’ coping strategies reveal fluid responses to intersecting and changing sociocultural expectations, nimbleness in their adaptations, and transience in the challenges faced. Other than contesting stereotypes around Chinese students, findings spell implications for differentiated and responsive college policies serving international students, faculty members, and local peers. It also points to the need to incorporate more longitudinal studies with clear conceptual frameworks so that novel and nuanced understanding of international students can emerge.
Disability in the Family: John and Alice Dewey Raising Their Son, Sabino
Authors: Danforth Scot
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The current biographic understanding of John Dewey's experience adopting and raising an Italian boy named Sabino emphasizes the theme of finding an emotional replacement for Morris and Gordon, two young sons who had tragically died on family trips to Europe. Lacking is substantive attention to the fact that John Dewey's son had a physical disability who grew up during the early surge of eugenics thought in American popular life. The leading biographer Jay Martin has portrayed John and Alice Dewey as rescuing Sabino from poverty, an experience that gave John Dewey “a special empathy for the second-best, the second-class citizen, the loser in society. “ What is missing from all biographic research on the Deweys is their experience of raising a boy with a physical disability during a historical time when disabilities were highly stigmatized.

Purpose/Objective/Research

The purpose of this historical study is to supplement the current understanding of John Dewey fathering an adopted son with an account that attends to the fact that young Sabino had a physical disability. Working in the disability studies tradition, this analysis explores both how the Deweys contended with Sabino's bone tuberculosis as an illness requiring medical treatment and how they navigated the complex political context of deeply discriminatory attitudes surrounding disabled persons. The conclusion initiates a discussion of the larger questions concerning how the experiences of fathering a boy impacted directly by disability oppression might have influenced John Dewey's political activity and scholarship.

Research Design

This historical analysis utilizes prior biographic research, published and unpublished works by John Dewey, and primary historical documents such as family letters and medical and popular publications of the era.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This analysis finds that John and Alice Dewey were very loving and attentive parents who endured many struggles due to their child's disability. They worried about their son's health, and they capably navigated the available medical options. They were troubled by their son's suffering and pain, and they worked together with great consistency to comfort and support him. Further, they directly confronted disability prejudice, including educational segregation, and worked assiduously against the powerful cultural assumption that their disabled son should lead a life of anything less than full participation in the community. The article concludes with a preliminary examination of how these experiences influenced John Dewey's political writings and activities.
The Danger of a Single Theory: Understanding Students’ Voices and Social Justice in the Peruvian Andes
Authors: Levitan Joseph
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Working towards social justice in education requires students’ voices to be heard and understood. This is especially the case for students from marginalized populations. Prior research has shown the value and importance of students’ voices for school retention, academic success, school inclusivity, and student buy-in. However, more research is needed on how adults understand and interpret students’ voices and implement their understandings in school practice and policy.

Purpose/Objective

This paper uncovers the danger of misinterpreting students’ voices due to assumptions about concepts such as success and social justice. I explore this issue by interpreting first-generation Quechua (indigenous) students’ voices about success in the Peruvian Andes through four different paradigms concerned with social change, social reproduction, and social justice. The discussion places into dialogue feminist theory, critical theory, postcolonial theory, and development theory in order to highlight the implications of each interpretive framework for responsive education policy. I show how interpretations based on each theory offer divergent school policy options, the danger of a single theory for interpreting student voice.

Participants

The coresearchers for this paper are 14 young women from Quechua communities who are the first in their families to attend secondary school. Working with them are a woman from a Quechua community, a woman from Central Europe, and a man from the United States.

Research Design

A collaborative ethnographic case study utilizing student voice methods. The students developed the theme and topic for research during a student-led seminar. Based on the students’ questions, the adults helped facilitate the creation of an interview protocol with the students. The group answered the questions on the protocol and used the protocol to interview the students’ parents. We held three total focus group discussions to develop the protocol, discuss findings, and interrogate ideas of success.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The results highlight the vastly different interpretations and policy implications of students’ voices based on each theory—highlighting how social justice is a complex concept that requires discussion across theoretical orientations. The findings also show points of overall congruence, and cross-theory trends. Recommendations are for educational leaders and researchers (teachers, parents, administrators) to refect and think about empirical information from multiple theoretical frameworks in order to become more aware of the influence of one's own assumptions in educational decision-making.
Locating the Global: Schooling in an Interconnected World
Authors: Hull Glynda A. , Hellmich Emily A.
Published: November 2021

Background

Educators in the United States and internationally have become increasingly interested in incorporating international perspectives into curricula, programs, and policy. Rooted in a long history of international education, these efforts have been described variously as “multicultural,” “democratic,” and “international.” In this article and our work, we use the term global education for this phenomenon in order to signal, along with others, an important shift in conceptualizing how to prepare students for a globalized world.

Objective

This article is an initial exploration of current global education efforts in the United States and internationally. The study asks, “How do schools instantiate the global?” and considers how particular schools incorporated global concerns into their mission, curriculum, pedagogy, and structure.

Research Design

The research design consisted of a qualitative case study of thirteen schools located in the United States and Asia.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data consisted of online document collection, semi-structured interviews with administrators, teachers, and students, and observations. Data analysis consisted of iterative rounds of open-ended as well as thematic coding.

Findings

Findings revealed seven strategies used by schools to integrate a global orientation. Two detailed case studies showcased the complexities inherent in implementing these strategies.

Conclusions

This article underscores the challenges that schools in the United States and internationally face in instantiating a global education, particularly the meaningful integration of technology, second/foreign languages, and service learning as well as making a global education available across socioeconomic groups. It calls for additional research on how to foster global orientations that position all young people to become cosmopolitan members of local, national, and worldwide communities.
Selling Pre-K: Media, Politics, and Policy in the Case of Universal Prekindergarten in New York City
Authors: Delaney Katherine K. , Neuman Susan B.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Educational policy is informed by multiple stakeholders and actors. Research has focused on understanding how policy decisions are informed and made, as well as how teachers and school leaders take up these policies in their practice. However, few researchers have examined how educational policy is framed for the larger public and voting electorate through media coverage and how the use of rhetorical devices can shape the public's understandings of policies, practices, and promised outcomes. Publicly funded prekindergarten is an emerging movement in many states.

Purpose/Objective

This research examined how local and national media framed the scale-up of publicly funded, Universal Pre-Kindergarten (UPK) in the largest school district in the country: New York City. Across two years, including a mayoral primary, mayoral election, and high-profile state budget negotiations, we examine how six media outlets used rhetoric to create specific narratives about the goals, outcomes, and possibilities of UPK that resonated with voters.

Research Design

Qualitative methods were used to examine the content of six national and local media sources. Over 640 sources were analyzed to address the questions central to this study. Utilizing our theoretical framework of rhetorical policy analysis, as well as emergent coding, we cross-analyzed multiple themes, working to identify consistent and dominant narratives across the media coverage.

Findings

Findings reveal that four main narratives dominated the media coverage of the scale-up of pre-K in New York City. These narratives used emotional rhetoric to frame UPK in ways that detracted from meaningful, research-informed information about how to successfully support the care and learning of young children.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The role of media in framing educational policy and practice for the public is growing. Researchers and policy makers must be mindful of how the rhetorical approaches utilized by the media can and will inform the public's understanding of public education policy.
The (Mis)measure of Schools: How Data Affect Stakeholder Knowledge and Perceptions of Quality
Authors: Schneider Jack , Jacobsen Rebecca , White Rachel S. , Gehlbach Hunter
Published: November 2021

Purpose/Objective

Under the reauthorized Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states and districts retain greater discretion over the measures included in school quality report cards. Moreover, ESSA now requires states to expand their measurement efforts to address factors like school climate. This shift toward more comprehensive measures of school quality provides an opportunity for states and districts to think intentionally about a basic question: What specific information should schools collect and report to their communities?

Setting

This study took place in the community surrounding a small, highly diverse urban school district.

Population/Participants

Forty-five local residents representing a range of demographic backgrounds participated in a modified deliberative poll with an experimental treatment.

Intervention/Program/Practice

We randomly assigned participants into two conditions. In the first, participants accessed the state web portal, which houses all publicly available educational data about districts in the state. In the second condition, participants accessed a customized portal that contained a wider array of school performance information collected by the research team.

Research Design

This mixed-methods study used a modified deliberative polling format, in conjunction with a randomized controlled field trial.

Data Collection and Analysis

Participants in both conditions completed a battery of survey items that were analyzed through multiple regressions.

Findings/Results

When users of a more holistic and comprehensive data system evaluated unfamiliar schools, they not only valued the information more highly but also expressed more confidence in the quality of the schools.

Conclusions/Recommendations

We doubt that more comprehensive information will inevitably lead to higher ratings of school quality. However, it appears—both from prior research, from theory, and from this project—that deeper familiarity with a school often fosters more positive perceptions. This may be because those unfamiliar with particular schools rely on a limited range of data, which fail to adequately capture the full range of performance variables, particularly in the case of urban schools. We encourage future exploration of this topic, which may have implications for school choice, parental engagement, and accountability policy.
How Should Fifth-Grade Mathematics Teachers Start the School Year? Relations between Teacher–Student Interactions and Mathematics Instruction over One Year
Authors: Banse Holland W. , Palacios Natalia A. , Curby Timothy W. , Rimm-Kaufman Sara E.
Published: November 2021

Background

Teaching is comprised of interconnected practices. Some practices are domain neutral (DN), or independent of a content area. Examples of DN practices include emotional and instructional support and classroom organization. Others are domain specific (DS), or content dependent. Within a mathematics context, examples of DS practices include mathematical discourse, tasks, and coherent lessons.

Purpose

Using extant fifth-grade teacher observation data, we investigate the following questions: (1) Do quality DN practices at the start of a fifth-grade school year relate to higher DS practices at the end of the year? (2) Do early, quality DS practices relate to later, higher use of DN practices? Specifically, we investigate relations between emotional support and mathematical discourse, instructional support and mathematical tasks, and classroom organization and mathematical coherence.

Research Design

We use an autoregressive, cross-lagged structural equation model with three time points from a single academic year.

Findings/Results

Results indicated that early levels of high emotional support and classroom organization were associated with later high levels of mathematical discourse and coherence, respectively. Early implementation of demanding tasks was associated with later, higher instructional support.

Recommendations

We discuss implications for professional development and practice. Specifically, we suggest that teachers and instructional coaches consider how DN and DS practices relate to each other in order to boost teachers’ effectiveness.
Teachers’ Cognitive Flexibility on Engagement and Their Ability to Engage Students: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration
Authors: Stein Kristy Cooper , Miness Andrew , Kintz Tara
Published: November 2021

Background

Student engagement is a cognitively complex domain that is often oversimplified in theory and practice. Reliance on a single model overlooks the sophisticated nature of student engagement and can lead to misconceptions and limited understandings that hinder teachers’ ability to engage all of their students. Assessing varied models simultaneously frames student engagement as a dynamic process contingent upon interactions among many contextual variables.

Purpose

We explore the relationship between how high school teachers understand student engagement and their ability to consistently engage students in their classes. We present cognitive flexibility theory and its seven reductive biases to illustrate the complexity of engaging students across contexts and subjects. This theory makes a compelling a priori case that teachers who more consistently and effectively engage students in their classes are likely to be those who possess higher levels of cognitive flexibility in the domain of student engagement. To test this hypothesis empirically, we asked: Do teachers who are more effective at engaging students reveal more cognitive flexibility when discussing student engagement, as compared with teachers who are less effective at engaging students?

Research Design

We present a mixed-methods case study conducted over three years at one high school. We utilize annual student survey data to identify teachers with whom students reported relatively more and less classroom engagement. Then, we examine the comments of 18 teachers who participated in annual focus groups about student engagement across those three years to identify differences in how more and less engaging teachers express cognitive flexibility in their understanding of student engagement.

Findings

We find that teachers whom students found more engaging tended to illustrate more cognitive flexibility in how they thought and spoke about engagement. By contrast, teachers whom students rated as less engaging tended to see engagement in more simplistic and compartmentalized ways. Within these trends, the data provide evidence that individual teachers fall along the seven theorized continuums regarding the extent to which they demonstrated cognitive flexibility on engagement.

Conclusions

By bringing cognitive flexibility theory to the domain of student engagement, we call for a new research agenda focused on understanding the development of teachers’ knowledge of student engagement and, in turn, engaging instruction. In place of receiving a new model, tool, or checklist, teachers need opportunities to grapple with the complexity of engagement, to see and analyze various cases, and to build schema in relation to their classroom practice.
Getting to Scale with Moral Education: The Demands of Reproducibility and the Case of the Chicago Manual Training School, 1884–1904
Authors: Mccamant Jane
Published: November 2021

Background

Getting educational reforms “to scale” continues to be a primary preoccupation of scholars, but such studies tend to remain focused on the organizational or other characteristics of the school(s) receiving a given innovation.

Purpose

This article brackets the organizational elements of reform dissemination to consider the relationship between the ideational content of educational innovations and their success at being “scaled up.” It considers whether particular categories of educational outcomes are inherently less well suited to widespread reproduction.

Research Design

The article identifies a historical case of an educational reform effort that failed to be brought to scale as a method of considering these larger theoretical questions. First articulated in the early 1880s, the educational philosophy of manual training called for the incorporation of industrial training––in the form of tool work, metal shop, and technical drawing––into a rigorous and traditional academic curriculum. This combination of shop work and school work was intended to function holistically, developing the manual, intellectual, and moral capacities of the student simultaneously. Opened in 1884, the Chicago Manual Training School (CMTS) was intended to be an example of the implementation of this philosophy to be emulated by Chicago's public secondary schools. Such emulation never occurred. The case study portion of this article is based on in-depth historical analysis of the records of the CMTS, the papers of its founder, Henry Holmes Belfield, and other contemporaneous materials relating to the manual training movement and the context of late-19th-century education reform efforts.

Conclusions

The case of the CMTS suggests two necessary (but not sufficient) criteria for a given educational philosophy to be susceptible to reproduction: intelligibility and measurability. These two requirements are found to be particularly unlikely in educational innovations that emphasize the subtle and intangible connections of mind, body, and spirit or that seek primarily to teach character or disposition—here termed “moral education.”
Should Marriage Equality be Taught as Controversial Post-Obergefell v. Hodges?
Authors: Journell Wayne
Published: November 2021

Background

Having students engage with controversial issues is considered a hallmark of a quality civic education, in part because it requires students to interact with perspectives that contradict their existing worldviews, evaluate the legitimacy of positions based on evidence, and develop the skills and dispositions necessary for participation in an increasingly pluralistic democratic society. Most of the research on the teaching of controversial issues, however, has focused on how teachers and students respond to controversy as opposed to how controversy is framed. Teachers must determine whether an issue should be considered “open,” or controversial, or “settled,” or noncontroversial, in their classrooms, a decision that is both pedagogically important and often controversial. For issues that have been settled for some time, such as slavery or woman suffrage, the decision whether to frame them as open or settled is typically easy for teachers; however, issues that are in the process of tipping from open to settled, or vice versa, are more challenging and require that teachers make instructional decisions based on evidence and logical reasoning.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to critically analyze whether the issue of marriage equality should be framed as controversial in the aftermath of the 2015 landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States. In doing so, this article also offers several implications for the teaching of controversial issues broadly, particularly those that intersect with the identities of students and teachers.

Research Design

This article makes an analytical/theoretical argument using three commonly cited criteria for determining the openness of controversial issues: the epistemic criterion, the political criterion, and the politically authentic criterion.

Conclusions/Recommendations

After evaluating marriage equality using each criterion, I conclude that no rational reason exists for treating marriage quality as an open issue post-Obergefell. I also argue that the issue of marriage equality illustrates the need for teachers to be cognizant of how discussions of controversial issues that implicate students’ identities may impact students who may be marginalized by those issues. I recommend that when such issues have reached the point where subjective decisions must be made in determining whether they are framed as open or settled, deference should be made to framing those issues in a way that promotes public values as opposed to legitimizing private views.
Leaving a Profession after It's Left You: Teachers’ Public Resignation Letters as Resistance Amidst Neoliberalism
Authors: Dunn Alyssa Hadley
Published: November 2021

Context

Though there is a growing field of research on what makes teachers leave, little research includes an analysis of narratives written directly by teachers. Yet, amidst a growing body of teacher writing and a surge in digital media, there has emerged a new genre of teachers’ public resignation letters, many of which go “viral” when posted online. This research is contextualized by literature on teacher attrition and neoliberalism and framed within theories of teacher agency and teacher resistance.

Purpose

Within a context where the letters themselves are becoming more popular and the rates of teacher attrition continue to rise in troubling ways, this study explores a new genre by investigating the content and strategies employed in public resignation letters from teachers around the United States.

Research Design

This research employed a qualitative design, drawing on methods of content analysis, to analyze 23 publicly available resignation letters.

Conclusions

I argue that these letters represent a new form of public discourse. This discourse allows teachers to exercise their personal and professional agency in the form of resistance to dominant narratives about what public education is and should be and what current neoliberal reforms are doing to teachers and students. These among other reasons I uncovered through thematic coding are linked to contextual factors rather than individual ones, pointing to the limits of retention in a climate that does not support teachers’ agency. Further, the majority of reasons for leaving are explicitly or implicitly tied to current neoliberal educational policies. According to their letters, teachers left the profession because (1) neoliberal reforms and policies threatened learning conditions and (2) these reforms had negative consequences for teachers’ working conditions and beliefs. Specific neoliberal reforms and policies that were mentioned in the letters include: increased standardized testing and restrictions on curriculum, which teachers argued reflected a lack of care for students’ socioemotional needs; decreasing pay/benefits; and punitive teacher evaluation systems. In addition, the consequences of these reforms meant that teachers felt: a lack of time, a mismatch between their beliefs and the reality of teaching in today's educational climate, and a lack of trust and respect for their profession, and a lack of control over their working conditions.
Navigating the Gray Area: A School District's Documentation of the Relationship between Disability and Misconduct
Authors: Lewis Maria M.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The administration of student discipline is one of many responsibilities under the purview of teachers and educational leaders across the country. Maintaining a safe environment with minimal disruptions is not an easy task. From existing research on student discipline, we have learned that critical examination of data and continuous reflection are important, particularly in light of documented disparities in discipline practices. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), before a school district may discipline a student with a disability for greater than 10 days, it must first conduct what is referred to as a manifestation determination review (MDR) (20 U.S.C. §1415(k)(1)(E)). During this review process, the current version of the law requires school districts to address two questions: (1) Was the student's behavior caused by, or did it have a direct and substantial relationship to, the student's disability? (2) Was the student's misconduct caused by the district's failure to implement the student's individualized education program (IEP), as required by law? This study examines the implementation of this standard.

Research Question

This study poses the following research question: What factors (explicit and implicit) influence decision makers when deciding whether a student's misconduct was a manifestation of his or her disability?

Research Design

This project used a case study approach to examine 80 MDR decisions in one large urban school district in order to better understand how decision makers implement this standard. Specifically, this study reviewed 40 randomly selected decisions wherein decision makers determined that the student's actions were not a manifestation of his or her disability and 40 randomly selected decisions wherein decision makers determined that the student's actions were a manifestation of his or her disability.

Findings/Results

Decision makers cited the academic and behavioral manifestations of students’ disabilities, students’ behavioral histories, students’ ability to control their actions, and connections to the home and community. Despite these consistent factors, the striking similarities between Yes and No decisions illustrates the overall arbitrary nature of the decision-making process.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This article discusses implications that attend to both the procedure and substance of manifestation determination review.
Silenced Partners: Language Learning and the Role of Bilingual Peers in High School
Authors: Carhill-Poza Avary
Published: November 2021

Background

In schools, a major obstacle to drawing on emergent bilingual students’ knowledge and skills in their first language is a widespread lack of awareness about language use among adolescent English learners, including how peer talk can connect knowledge and abilities in both languages to school-based learning. Although research often acknowledges the importance of engaging students’ home language and culture to bridge to academic literacies in English, few have explicitly examined bilingual peer talk as a resource for language learning during adolescence.

Purpose

This study explores how emergent bilinguals engaged multiple linguistic codes to scaffold their own academic language development with peer support.

Research Design

Ethnography and discourse analysis of student interactions were used to contextualize and analyze the academic language use of four Spanish-speaking adolescent immigrant students, taking into account the affordances of classroom discourse structures and peer talk.

Conclusions

The study describes the linguistic resources available to Spanish-speaking adolescent immigrant students through their peers and shows that emergent bilingual youth used academic language in both Spanish and English most frequently—and in more elaborated interactions—while off-task or in less supervised spaces. Classroom discourse structures often limited student participation, particularly when students used nonstandard linguistic codes.
Evaluation of a New Theory of the Racial Achievement Gap
Authors: Yeh Stuart
Published: November 2021

Background

Although various hypotheses have been offered to explain the racial achievement gap between White and Black students, conventional theories that focus on the quality of schools, teachers, or a child's home environment are unsatisfactory. Instead, the available evidence points to a new theory.

Purpose

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the new theory against this evidence and to compare the explanatory capacity of this theory with the explanatory capacity of three conventional theories of the racial achievement gap.

Sample/Design/Analysis

Analyses of data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of the Kindergarten Class of 1998 (ECLS-K) were combined with results from studies that suggest how the hypothesized mechanism operates to maintain and perpetuate differences in achievement that exist at entry into kindergarten, plus results from randomized experiments that test hypothesized theoretical relationships.

Results

The results suggest a pattern of puzzling empirical results that are difficult to reconcile except in terms of the new theory.

Conclusion

The evidence points away from conventional theories regarding the achievement gap and toward the new theory.
Examining Elementary Teachers’ Risk for Occupational Stress: Associations with Teacher, School, and State Policy Variables
Authors: Lambert Richard G. , McCarthy Christopher J. , Fitchett Paul G. , Eyal Maytal
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

It is widely understood that teachers are plagued by a myriad of challenges that ultimately affect their stress levels, job satisfaction, and effectiveness at work. Teacher stress can lead to burnout, lowered occupational commitment, and an eventual decision to leave the field. An important question for the field is how best to understand which teachers are most vulnerable to stress. This study used Lazarus and Folkman's transactional theory, which is the dominant model within the stress literature, to examine teachers’ stress vulnerability.

Objective

This study examined how elementary teacher appraisals of their classroom environment contribute to their risk for stress in the context of individual, classroom, and school characteristics, as well as state-level policy factors. Further, this study looked at how these factors are associated with teachers’ occupational stress, burnout, and commitment to teaching.

Participants

Participants were 11,850 full-time public school elementary teachers (Grades 1–5) who responded to the National Center for Education Statistics 2007/2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS).

Research Design

Secondary data from the SASS were employed. The Rasch rating scale model was used to form scores on the Appraisal Index (teachers’ ratio of experiencing resources versus demands), as well as the Classroom Control and Burnout scales.

Data Collection and Analysis

Multilevel modeling was used. Each model had two levels with teachers nested within the state where they work. Two types of models were estimated using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) software and restricted maximum likelihood procedures. The SASS teacher final sampling weight was then normalized and applied to all analyses within the HLM software. All results were reported with robust standard errors.

Findings

Teachers classified as at risk for stress based on SASS items about classroom demand and resources were found to be more likely to report lower job satisfaction and burnout symptoms, as well as reduced occupational commitment. Professional characteristics, school context, and the policy climate in which teachers work were also associated with teachers being at risk for stress.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Given these connections between occupational stressors, teacher appraisals of the classroom environment, and occupational outcomes, these results suggest that education stakeholders should be mindful of the climate and context in which public policies are enacted.
Intersections, Ambivalence, and Racial Justice in Schools: Black Queer Students Remap Complexity
Authors: Mayo Cris
Published: November 2021

This chapter analyzes retrospective interviews with Black LGBTQ college students discussing how their racial and LGBTQ identities intersected in high school. Their complex analysis shows the difficulties schools had recognizing the intersections between support for racial equity and LGBTQ-related equity. Their experience demonstrates the necessity of preparing educators and administrators to understand how many vectors of identity shape students’ lives. Their narratives, too, show how Black community values and practices helped them to develop their sense of political advocacy on all issues, that traditions of civil rights advocacy gave them vocabularies for articulating new recognition and rights claims, and that longstanding forms of racialized sexual and gender identities were resources for their own rethinking of their commitments, even if they nonetheless did not always experience acceptance at schools or at home.
Introduction and Overview of the Yearbook: Facilitating Institutional Change for Racial Equity in the Educational Pipeline
Authors: Welton AnjalÉ D. , Zamani-Gallaher Eboni M.
Published: November 2021

Although problem identification and understanding the root causes of racism in its many forms is important, this yearbook identifies institutional structures, processes, and practices that are critical in working towards racial equity across the educational pipeline, with each chapter offering foundational perspectives for doing so. We need scholarship that identifies how and why racism in education is still a problem, as it is the first step towards developing solutions to address these inequities. Even so, more research is needed that goes beyond just identifying the problem of racism and moves forward with systemic action toward rectifying it. As such, the chapters in this yearbook give clear, well-defined recommendations for what institutional change is necessary to make solutions for racial equity a reality. Racial equity is a systemic outlook that ensures racially diverse perspectives are equally embedded in institutional culture, structures, and policies. Finally, the authors in each chapter emphasize that doing racial equity work is not a one-time initiative, but systemic, ongoing, and a goal that is nonnegotiable.
Where Do We Go from Here? Reflections on Building Institutional Diversity for Lasting Change
Authors: Pak Yoon K. , Span Christopher M. , Anderson James D. , Trent William T.
Published: November 2021

This article illustrates how the departments of Educational Policy Studies (EPS) and Education Policy, Organization and Leadership (EPOL) in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign built institutional diversity for lasting change. It relies on statistical data from the university, college, and department, and an interview conducted with Dr. James D. Anderson, former department head of the two units, and Dr. William T. Trent, a longstanding faculty member of EPS and EPOL, to document the remarkable diversity success developed over the past 30thirty years. The testimonies and data used offer profound considerations of how higher education can and must diversify itself to truly establish the progressive change needed to remedy the grand challenges impacting the world and to educate the next America upon us.
What If Only What Can be Counted Will Count? A Critical Examination of Making Educational Practice “Scientific”
Authors: Ng Jennifer C. , Stull Don D. , Martinez Rebecca S.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In recent decades, federal policymakers have pushed for education to be a more “scientific” endeavor. While scholars have considered the implications of this orientation for educational researchers, less attention has been given to its impact on educational practitioners.

Purpose/Focus of the Study

By focusing on the local interpretation and implementation of a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) model in one Midwestern school district, this study documents the translation of a comprehensive reform initiative meant to make educational practice more data-driven and scientific. With particular attention to interactions between district and building administrators, classroom teachers, and a group of outside consultants, we also consider the consequential effects of principal–agent relations in determining how learners (should) learn and teachers (should) teach.

Research Design

Using ethnographic methods over a period of five months, this study emerged from a larger project examining the work of educators in a rural district that includes 18 schools and serves approximately 7,600 students from racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse backgrounds. With MTSS as the unifying agenda across multiple interactions that involved a cross-section of the district's staff, administrative leaders, and outside consultants, we analyzed fieldnotes generated from participant observation during MTSS-specific meetings and semi-structured, individual interviews conducted with key implementation principals and agents. Other fieldnotes and interviews provided confirmation of our primary analysis, as well as supplementary perspectives from building and classroom contexts.

Findings

Through our analysis, we found that implementation leaders presumed the infallibility of the MTSS model; relied exclusively on certain forms of quantitative data; standardized the individual needs of learners, processes of learning, and roles of teachers; and insisted on fidelity of intervention as an end in itself.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Implementation leaders invoking research to inform practice can sometimes silence practitioners rather than foster their substantive involvement and understanding. This marginalizes certain types of knowledge that can contribute to understanding students’ needs, and it forces practitioners to be data-deferent rather than data-driven. The concept of implementation fidelity also needs to be reconsidered—not as an absolute good but with the necessary flexibility afforded to practitioners who are (1) educated in the essential components of available interventions, (2) able to become fluent through practice, and (3) allowed to exercise their professional expertise and judgment as appropriate.