bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Preparing Teachers to Lead Mathematics Discussions
Authors: Boerst Timothy , Sleep Laurie , Ball Deborah , Bass Hyman
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Discussion is central to mathematics teaching and learning, as well as to mathematics as an academic discipline. Studies have shown that facilitating discussions is complex work that is not easily done or learned. To make such complex aspects of the work of teaching learnable by beginners, recent research has focused on approaches to teacher education that decompose practice into smaller tasks or routines that can be articulated, unpacked, studied, and rehearsed.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Drawing on the elements of Grossman et al.'s (2009) framework for pedagogies of practice in professional education, this article describes an approach to analyzing teaching practice that supports the design of teacher education in which novices to learn how to engage in high-leverage teaching practices and simultaneously develop a sense of why the work is done.

Setting

The context for the study is a mathematics methods course for prospective elementary teachers.

Research Design

The study involved qualitative analysis of both the design of the course and its implementation.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Results from this study suggest that: (1) Decomposing teaching into nested practices of varying grain sizes that maintain the connection between techniques and domains can support beginning teachers in attending simultaneously to the how and the why of practice, as well as provide a map of teaching that teacher educators can use to support the learning of teaching. (2) Nesting early approximations of practice inside subsequent ones is a way to support beginning teachers in building toward recom-posed teaching practice. As practices are nested, teacher educators can increase the complexity of the approximations by adjusting the content and authenticity of the context of practice as well as by decreasing the amount scaffolding provided. (3) Assessment is vital to pedagogies of practice. Decompositions, approximations, and representations of practice need to be developed in ways that support assessment for the array of teacher education purposes. (4) Because subject matter is at the heart of teaching, it is crucial to attend to the ways in which the content interacts with pedagogies of practice.
“Don't Know Much About History”: The New York Times 1943 Survey of U.S. History and the Controversy it Generated
Authors: Halvorsen Anne-Lise
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Educators, parents, politicians, and the media often complain that young people know little history and compare them unfavorably to better-educated, earlier generations. However, the charge is exaggerated. Young people have performed poorly on history tests for decades. Students’ poor scores on one test in particular, the focus of this study, caught the nation's attention: the New York Times 1943 survey of college freshmen's history knowledge.

Focus of Study

This study examines the debate between supporters of history education and supporters of social studies education about the New York Times 1943 survey of college freshmen's history knowledge. In a report on the survey results, the newspaper claimed that these students knew little of their country's history, and not much more about its geography. The study places the survey in the broader context of history and social studies education in the early to mid-twentieth century. The study traces the origins of the survey and the debate between two key players, Allan Nevins and Erling Hunt, and describes reactions to the survey from educators, politicians, the media, and the public. In addition, the study describes how the American Historical Association, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and the National Council for the Social Studies counteracted the survey's findings to defend the teaching of history and social studies in the U.S.

Research Design

This study is a historical examination of the survey and the controversy it generated. The study uses archival resources, primary documents, contemporary newspaper and journal articles, and key players’ private letters, to explain how the survey was developed, reported on, and responded to.

Conclusions

Although the survey was not the first of its kind, and certainly not the last, and did not result in major changes in history and social studies instruction, it gave defenders of history education and social studies education a national battleground for their war of words. In examining the increased interest in the pedagogical debate on fact-based learning versus historical thinking skills that the survey provoked, this study brings perspective to a long-standing controversy, highlights the tension between advocates of history education and advocates of social studies education, and shows how the public reacted with deep alarm to the survey's results. This study highlights the divisive effects of using a single test to draw conclusions about the state of education. In the conclusion, the study calls for a negotiation by all sides in what are known today as “the history wars.”
The Social Perspective Taking Process: What Motivates Individuals to Take Another's Perspective?
Authors: Gehlbach Hunter , Brinkworth Maureen E. , Wang Ming-Te
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

A growing literature describes multiple benefits of social perspective taking—many of which are particularly important for schools. Despite these potential benefits for administrators, counselors, teachers, and students, little is known about social perspective taking as a process.

Purpose/Research Question

If educational researchers are ultimately to design interventions to help improve the perspective-taking capacities of those in schools, they need to fully understand the underlying process. Particularly important is the need to understand: What initially motivates individuals to take the perspective of others?

Participants

To investigate this question, a sample of 18 adults from an array of different professions (who were nominated as adept perspective takers) and 13 high school students (who were nominated as struggling with social perspective taking) participated in the study.

Research Design

Participants completed a survey, a performance task, and in-depth interviews as part of this mixed-method exploratory study. The interviews served as the primary source of data and were coded for evidence of what triggered (or inhibited) participants’ motivation to engage in the social perspective-taking process.

Findings

The interview data established the existence of 13 specific factors that impacted participants’ motivation to engage in social perspective taking across a wide array of contexts. Seven factors generally enhanced individuals’ motivation to engage in social perspective taking; three factors were mixed; and three factors inhibited their motivation.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This research indicates that not only might individuals be motivated to engage in social perspective taking through multiple pathways, but these pathways might be combined and/or interact with one another. These motivating factors raise important issues for further research. In addition, at a practical level, they provide a foundation for developing structures to motivate individuals in schools to engage in perspective taking more often.
Identity Literacy: Reading and Teaching Texts as Resources for Identity Formation
Authors: Schachter Elli , Galili-Schachter Inbar
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Literacy has been traditionally posited as a primary educational goal. The concept is now understood in the literature as extending way beyond the mere technicalities of proficiency in reading and writing, encompassing a broad range of skills and practices related to comprehension, communication, and the ability to use texts in multiple settings. Cultural literacy and critical literacy are two conceptual models frequently used to understand the essence of literacy and why it is a worthy educational goal. Each model prescribes different curricular goals and preferred teaching practice in educational settings spanning all disciplines and age groups. In this article, we suggest a third conceptual model, identity literacy, based in developmental psychology's concept of identity. We define identity literacy as readers’ proficiency and willingness to engage the meaning systems embedded within texts and to consider adopting them as part of their own personal meaning system—that system within which they define themselves and their relation to the world. Setting identity literacy as a goal of teaching frames the practice of teaching texts differently than the other models.

Focus of Study

The concept emerged from a qualitative study focusing on high school teachers who primarily teach texts in the classroom. The study examined their goals and justifications for their chosen practices of teaching texts and examined these in light of extant literature regarding literacy, and the literature on identity development.

Setting and Participants

Twelve expert teachers of the curricular subject of Jewish thought taught in the Israeli nonreligious school sector served as the empirical foundation for developing the concept.

Research Design

Qualitative methodology was used to explore teachers’ ideas regarding teaching texts. Teachers were interviewed twice: once regarding their life story, reasons for becoming a teacher, and general goals in teaching, and once after they were observed teaching, regarding their reflections on the practices they employed in teaching texts. Common themes were identified using techniques based in grounded theory analysis.

Findings/Results

Three themes regarding teachers’ ideas on the proper way to teach texts emerged from the analysis: Good textual study is potentially personally meaningful; good teaching accentuates the potential of texts to trigger identity processes in the reader; and for students to learn to read in this manner, a particular stance toward texts needs to be taught.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The concept of identity literacy is suggested as an alternative conceptual lens with which to frame the purpose and practice of teaching texts in the classroom that may be relevant to teachers in a broad range of school disciplines.
From “Culturally Deprived” to “At Risk”: The Politics of Popular Expression and Educational Inequality in the United States, 1960-1985
Authors: Martinez Sylvia L. M. , Rury John L.
Published: November 2021

This article examines the terms “culturally deprived” and “disadvantaged” in light of their popular use in the sixties and following decades, particularly in the ethnic and mainstream press. These expressions represented an effort to explain differences in educational attainment and academic achievement along lines of social class, race, and ethnicity from an environmental, liberal viewpoint. We consider the use of such terms from the standpoint of both the African American and Mexican American communities at the time, representing perspectives from the North, South, and West Coast. In doing this, we document a national effort by educators and the concerned public to comprehend and address long-standing patterns of social and educational inequity. State and federal programs that used “compensatory” and “remedial” education to address the problems of “culturally deprived” and “disadvantaged” communities are also considered, along with political tensions within and between the African American and Mexican American communities over benefits to be gained. The use of these expressions was eventually marked by controversy as ethnic communities and academic critics labeled them a new form of prejudice, based on conceptions of cultural and academic inadequacy. While the terms fell out of favor, a new generation was left with the problem of explaining persistent differences in educational outcomes and academic achievement that marked children's lives. The expression “at risk” was brought into the mainstream, and the academic terms “social capital” and “cultural capital” were introduced and gained currency. While these new terms have not sparked the controversies of the past, they fail to fully characterize the systematic educational disadvantages experienced by children from poor or minority backgrounds. The article closes with a brief discussion of the recurring dilemma of how best to describe persistently unequal educational outcomes, particularly when they continue to correspond to broad patterns of social and economic inequality in contemporary society.
How International Field Experiences Promote Cross-Cultural Awareness in Preservice Teachers through Experiential Learning: Findings from a Six-Year Collective Case Study
Authors: Malewski Eric , Sharma Suniti , Phillion Joann
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The article examines how international field experiences promote cross-cultural awareness in U.S. American preservice teachers through experiential learning. The findings presented here are based on a 6-year study of a short-term study abroad program in Honduras that included an international field experience component and took place from 2003 to 2008.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of the Study

This article examines questions that contribute to the field of teacher education and the effort to prepare future teachers for culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms as early as the preservice level. Several questions guide this study: How do international field experiences prepare preservice teachers to teach in diverse settings? How does experiential learning in an international context complicate preservice teachers’ cultural knowledge? What are the pedagogical implications of increased cultural awareness among preservice teachers for classroom practice? How do international field experiences open preservice teachers to future opportunities to explore and work in culturally diverse communities?

Participants and Setting

The current study presents a study of 49 preservice teachers from a Midwestern university enrolled in a short-term study abroad program to Honduras as part of an international field experience. During this field experience, students were placed in a local elementary or a secondary school, were enrolled in two required courses, visited rural and urban schools, and visited archeological sites.

Research Design

The qualitative collective case study employed data that included questionnaires, interviews, focus interviews, course assignments, discussions, journal reflections, and researchers’ observations and field notes. Analysis sought to triangulate findings from the multiple data sources for accuracy and reliability when reporting the findings.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Findings from the study demonstrated that experiential learning in an international setting is key to developing preservice teachers’ cross-cultural awareness. Application of cross-cultural concepts during field experiences provided preservice teachers with theoretical understandings and practical applications for teaching culturally diverse students. Recommendations include international field placements for providing a unique and critical site for promoting cross-cultural awareness through experiential learning; more cross-cultural opportunities for preservice teachers that provoke questioning of conventional teaching and school knowledge; and international field experiences in diverse classrooms that promote preservice teachers’ understanding of themselves and how to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students.
Two Dimensions of an Inquiry Stance toward Student-Learning Data
Authors: Nelson Tamara Holmlund , Slavit David , Deuel Angie
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Schools and districts are increasingly emphasizing evidence-based decision making as a means for improving teaching and learning. In response, professional development efforts have shifted toward situated, sustained activities that involve groups of teachers in reflective inquiry about student-learning data, instructional practices, and curricular goals. Although strong evidence exists regarding the benefits of looking at student work, there is little research that investigates how teachers might work together to attain these benefits. Classroom teachers often lack the necessary skills and supports to enact data-based inquiry in a manner that informs and influences classroom practices.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

In response to a need for specific frameworks to support teachers’ collaborative interactions around student-learning data, we have developed a conceptual framework for describing and characterizing key influences on teachers’ actions and interactions. The purpose of this article is to fully describe the two dimensions that constitute the framework, illustrate them with examples from multiple cases, and discuss potential implications of the framework on research and practice.

Population/Participants/Subjects

This framework was developed from multiyear case analyses of seven professional learning communities (PLCs). The teachers in these PLCs were secondary science and mathematics teachers who were supported by a 3-year professional development project.

Research Design

We began to derive this conceptual framework using constant comparison in the development of semiannual case studies. Preliminary results and hypotheses on the specific ways in which teacher groups were interacting as they worked with student-learning data led to the need to better conceptualize what was occurring. Building on others’ work related to stance, we used grounded theory methods to construct and refine this framework.

Findings/Results

A detailed framework and examples are provided regarding collaborative teacher inquiry groups’ inquiry stance along two dimensions: (1) their epistemological stance toward student-learning data, and (2) the nature of their dialogue when using these data in their inquiry process. The first dimension is delineated by four descriptive categories ranging from an improving to a proving stance; the second dimension ranges from sustained negotiation to no negotiation.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This analysis of inquiry stance in a collaborative group is valuable in providing a detailed tool for empirical analyses of collaborative teacher development in the context of working with student-learning data. Additionally, it provides practical support for facilitators and school leaders by characterizing fundamental and often hidden influences on PLC processes and outcomes.
Is Arizona's Approach to Educating Its ELs Superior to Other Forms of Instruction?
Authors: Martinez-Wenzl Mary , Pérez Karla C. , Gandara Patricia
Published: November 2021

Background

In the Horne v Flores Supreme Court decision of June 25, 2009, the Court wrote that one basis for finding Arizona in compliance with federal law regarding the education of its English learners was that the state had adopted a “significantly more effective” than bilingual education instructional model for EL students—Structured English Immersion (SEI).

Purpose

This paper reviews the extant research on SEI, its definitions, origins, and its effectiveness, particularly in contrast to other instructional strategies. This paper asks, Does the research bear out the Court's conclusion? What is the evidence that Arizona's program of SEI is really superior to other approaches, including bilingual or dual language education? How are Arizona's EL students faring under this “significantly more effective” instructional program?

Research Design

Data on the relative effectiveness of SEI are drawn from a comprehensive review of the literature. Analysis of public documents, particularly records from the Arizona English Language Learners Task Force, which was charged with selecting a research-based instructional program for English learners. Drawing from a recent ethnographic study and student achievement data, we examine the impact of structured English immersion programs on English learners in Arizona thus far, beginning with achievement outcomes.

Conclusions/Recommendations

There is no research basis for the Court's statement the SEI is “significantly more effective”; at best SEI is no better or no worse than other instructional strategies, particularly bilingual instruction, when they are both well implemented. However, SEI as implemented in Arizona carries serious negative consequences for EL students stemming from the excessive amount of time dedicated to a sole focus on English instruction, the de-emphasis on grade level academic curriculum, the discrete skills approach it employs, and the segregation of EL students from mainstream peers. Moreover, the paper argues that there are, in fact, strategies that can ameliorate these problems as well as provide an additive, rather than a subtractive, educational experience for English learner and mainstream students alike.
“No Unfavorable Comments from Any Quarter”: Teaching Black History to White Students in the American South, 1928–1943
Authors: Woyshner Christine
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The history curriculum is often used to help reach the goal of racial tolerance and understanding by teaching about the nation's diversity. Many educators believe that teaching about diverse peoples in schools will bring about greater equity in society. This historical study looks at the segregated American South from 1928 to 1943 and an effort by a mixed-race voluntary organization to teach Black history in White schools.

Focus of Study

This study examines the efforts of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), beginning in 1928, to promote the teaching of Black history in southern segregated schools in an effort to bring about greater racial tolerance and awareness. The CIC circulated a booklet, which was a short history of African Americans titled “America's Tenth Man,” and invited schools to submit essays on Black history for cash prizes. The contests ran from 1928 until 1943, when the CIC was renamed the Southern Regional Council, which reflected a change in the organization's emphasis on regional planning.

Research Design

This is a historical examination of teaching Black history in segregated schools. The author relies on primary sources—including teachers’ reports, correspondence, and students’ projects—and secondary studies in the history of education and the curriculum.

Conclusions

By challenging historians’ views of the CIC—that the organization was largely ineffectual and that its Tenth Man contests did not result in any measureable improvement in race relations in the South—the author raises questions about the implementation of Black history curricula in order to influence students’ behavior and attitudes about race. Likewise, the author shows how White teachers were outspoken activists for Black history in schools. The study concludes that the teaching of Black history to White students was not uniform and was ideologically diverse.
The Inception of the Meaning and Significance of Endowment in American Higher Education, 1890–1930
Authors: Kimball Bruce A. , Johnson Benjamin A.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Endowments of institutions of higher education in the United States have attracted widespread attention in recent decades due to their meteoric rise in value and their precipitous decline during the recent recession. But there has been little research on the beginnings of the significant interest in and importance of endowments.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This study examines how the importance of endowment, the emphasis upon increasing it, the competition for it, and even its current meaning originated between 1890 and 1930. The research focused on the emerging meaning and significance of endowment in higher education in the United States, demonstrated by the eight universities that acquired the largest endowments during the period between 1890 and 1930.

Research Design

This study presents a historical analysis relying on published documents and archival records from the period between 1890 and 1930.

Conclusions/Recommendations

While colleges have long had permanent invested funds, endowment first acquired its meaning and significance in U.S. higher education between 1890 and 1930 as universities realized that their autonomy, stability, and comparative advantage over competitors depended heavily on the amount of their financial capital. The universities that first made this realization began to focus on increasing their endowment and thereby established an upper tier of wealthy universities that maintained this elite status through the ensuing century. Consequently, the inception of endowment between 1890 and 1930 had far-reaching influence on the stratification of higher education in the United States.
Drowning in Data but Thirsty for Analysis
Authors: Roderick Melissa
Published: November 2021

Here then is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century. We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society… Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating across many fields—from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely or reliably. Knowledge has both saved and burdened us. — Atul Gawande, The Checklist, p. 13
Getting at Student Understanding - the Key to Teachers’ Use of Test Data
Authors: Supovitz Jonathan
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Much has been written about the efficacy of formative assessment. However, relatively little of that research focuses on the design qualities of the assessment instruments themselves that might provide useful information to teachers.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article decomposes the formative assessment process and reviews the empirical literature on the feedback from an assessment event to the teacher to investigate two research questions. First, what are the design elements of assessments that can enhance their embedded information to help teachers understand how students are thinking about a particular content area? Second, what do teachers need to know to be able to take advantage of more sophisticated assessment designs?

Research Design

The article reviews the literature on test design qualities, focusing on empirical studies that have examined how the qualities of tests inform teachers about student understanding. Overall, 117 articles were synthesized to extract three qualities of test design that enable or constrain their potential to provide insight to teachers about student thinking.

Findings/Results

The literature review identified three crucial test qualities that improve their potential value to teachers. First, tests can convey information about students’ developmental path toward a learning goal. Second, tests can provide information about students’ thought processes. Third, tests can be designed to reveal information about students’ misconceptions within a content area.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The article concludes with a conceptual framework to guide future research on ways to maximize the potential feedback that teachers can receive from assessments. The framework, and hence suggestions for future research, focuses on conducting research on the hypothesized relationships between the qualities of a test itself, the analyses that teachers conduct from the resulting data of student answers, teachers’ instructional responses, and the effect of this process on student learning.
Utopian Visions: Emancipatory Possibilities
Authors: Benedict Cathy
Published: November 2021

Abstract utopians dream of far away El Dorado, the land of milk and honey, Oz, fairy tale kingdoms… (Kellner & O'Hara, 1976, p. 29)

I began to think, how do we systematically cultivate the ability to do what Bloch called dreaming forward, and what value does it have, to be compelled to imagine a different world? What are its characteristics? This is not the same as a political exercise in which we are always bound by someone else's profane choices, and we just select among them the least bad options. What do we want? Do we just want that when you go to the doctor, you don't have to pay? Is that it? Is that gonna do it? (Gilroy, in Shelby & Gilroy, 2008, p. 133)
Hillary: The Movie, the History Channel, and the Challenge of the Documentary for Democratic Education
Authors: Stoddard Jeremy
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

In Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission (2009), the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence citizens’ decisions about candidates and issues that will appear on election ballots. More important, however, for democratic educators, the ruling was grounded in an assumption that citizens can easily recognize “political speech” when it appears in media such as Hillary: The Movie, the film at issue in the case.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This article examines implications of this ruling for democratic education. In particular, this article focuses on the nature of the documentary form in society, including how it is used toward political purposes and how teachers, students, and the public view it as an objective source of information in and out of the classroom.

Research Design

This study is designed as an analytic essay that addresses a critical issue within democratic and media education and draws from a broad base of empirical, theoretical, and conceptual work to examine issues exacerbated by the Citizens United ruling.

Conclusions/Recommendations

This article concludes that critical media education should be a core tenet of democratic education, especially as we move into the 21st century, and outlines areas to address in curriculum, pedagogy, and policy.
Dear Mr. Kozol…. Four African American Women Scholars and the Re-Authoring of Savage Inequalities
Authors: Farmer-Hinton Raquel L. , Lewis Joi D. , Patton Lori D. , Rivers Ishwanzya D.
Published: November 2021

Background

In 1991, Savage Inequalities quickly became the most riveting assessment of the inequalities in U.S. public schools. When Kozol visited East St. Louis for his book, the authors of this paper lived and attended schools there. As Kozol's readers in their respective graduate and undergraduate classes, the authors found it difficult to merge his outsider views with their insider experiences because their backgrounds included many unnamed human and structural resources, valuable beyond a dominant and patriarchal framework.

Objective

The objective of this paper is to resituate Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities by critiquing Kozol's caricaturization of East St. Louis and its schools as places where students and community members lack communal agency and resources. Through the lens of each form of capital from Yosso's (2005) Community Cultural Wealth Model, the authors show how their stories reflected access to various forms of capital as K-12 students in East St. Louis.

Research Design

The methodological framework for this study is narrative inquiry. The authors storied their East St. Louis experiences by generating a narrative protocol and using the protocol to share their backgrounds, historical and contemporary understandings of East St. Louis, and each author's educational and professional trajectories. Once the narratives were completed, the authors shared and analyzed the narrative texts to identify patterns and emergent themes.

Findings

The narratives revealed how families, teachers, community centers, churches, and extracurricular programs were sources of familial, aspirational, resistant, navigational, and social capital. The narratives also provided clarity on the power and dignity of “unnamed” family and community structures, even though these forms of capital are rarely explored in the dominant literature.

Conclusion

The narratives complicate Kozol's interpretation and prompt readers to look at East St. Louis (and other urban communities) with a more paradoxical frame. This study is important for future educators who read Savage Inequalities and misunderstand urban students and families as subjects who need to be saved. Educators and potential educators require a much more complicated view of urban school districts and school children since scholarship can often provide a one-sided picture of inadequacy and despair. The authors contend that although East St. Louis indeed faces critical challenges fueled by racism and classism, the authors re-storied Kozol's narrative to expose the very rich source of community cultural capital that exists in East St. Louis and other urban centers very much like it.
In Fits and Starts: Learning to Create a Neighborhood Educational Opportunity Zone
Authors: Scanlan Martin , Miller Peter
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Disparities in educational opportunity and academic achievement are closely connected to social class characteristics that lie beyond the schoolhouse doors. Comprehensive approaches to urban school reform are ecological, seeing schools nested in broader communities. The research presented here examines one such approach in a neighborhood educational opportunity zone: a geographically defined area where a traditionally marginalized children and families are clustered and resources are intensely focused to respond to their concomitant needs.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

This study contributes to a richer understanding of these zones by examining the genesis of one. Guided by sociocultural learning theory, our central question is: How do communities of practice influence the learning among the adults in a neighborhood educational opportunity zone?

Research Design

This qualitative case study examined a neighborhood educational opportunity zone in an urban area of the Midwestern United States. Our theoretical framework focused on communities of practice: groups who share a common purpose and learn from one another about how to pursue this purpose. We examined the three constituent dimensions of communities of practice: a domain, a shared practice relating to this domain, and a community engaged in this practice.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data were generated from archival documents (brochures, organizational publications), interviews, and field notes from site visits. Data were analyzed by applying the three components of communities of practice: domain, community, and practice. From the interviews, we mapped relational networks to establish parameters of the community. We coded the array of data for indications of a commonly defined domain and shared practices within this domain. Our analysis was an iterative process unpacking whether and how the central participants of the neighborhood educational opportunity zone learned to collectively pursue this common domain.

Findings/Results

As this neighborhood educational opportunity zone formed, a cohesive community emerged whose members largely agree on a common set of concerns, but have a less cohesive understanding of shared practices with which to address these concerns.

Conclusions/Recommendations

The learning among adults within a neighborhood educational opportunity zone is a messy, convoluted, inconsistent process. These zones, by definition, are crafting not only new communities of practice, but new constellations among these. Scholars and practitioners alike will develop richer appreciation of these zones by attending to the complex learning processes occurring within and across these constellations.
Strengthening Grade 3-5 Students’ Foundational Knowledge of Rational Numbers
Authors: Good Thomas L. , Wood Marcy B. , Sabers Darrell , Olson Amy M. , Lavigne Alyson Leah , Sun Huaping , Kalinec-Craig Crystal
Published: November 2021

Background

American students have done poorly in algebra and that has generated policy concerns about preparing students for STEM careers. There has been growing recognition that the algebra problem may begin in earlier grades when students do not adequately master rational numbers.

Purpose

The study provided a series of workshops organized around problematic issues that students have in learning rational numbers. The research was designed to help all grade 3-5 teachers in a single school district help students gain in their knowledge of rational numbers.

Population

The population was drawn from one large school district (13 schools) and included 140 teachers and 2,845 students matched pre to post.

Research Design

The study used a quasi-experimental design. As all teachers in the district were involved, there was no control group.

Findings

On the basis of pre-post testing, girl and boy students, as well as students from diverse SES schools demonstrated large gains in their knowledge of rational numbers. There were no significant differences in gains for girls and boys at any of the three grade levels, but SES remained a main effect for gains in achievement for grades 3 and 4 even after entering prior achievement as a covariate and the interaction between SES and gender was significant for grade 5.

Recommendations

The findings provide clear evidence that students can make notable gains in learning rational numbers if they are given the opportunity to do so. The authors provide their intentions to further analyze the quantitative data (presented in this paper) with qualitative data that were collected in the study (e.g., providing open-ended response opportunities for students to respond to rational number questions like, “What is a fraction? What is a decimal? What is a percent?”
Making Space: A Gay-Straight Alliance's Fight to Build Inclusive Environments
Authors: Collin Ross
Published: November 2021

Background

Education researchers are paying increasing attention to student activism and to the social production of school spaces. Few studies, however, have brought these two concerns together to examine how student activists work to rebuild school spaces in line with their political commitments. In the present study, I address this gap at the intersection of two important research trends.

Purpose

I examine how a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) endeavored to build its school as an inclusive environment open to students of different sexual orientations. Focusing on the semiotic dimension of spatial production, I investigate how a conflict over a sign on the GSA's bulletin board functioned as one front in an ongoing struggle to produce the school's main hallway as a particular kind of space. As signs and constructions of space may be interpreted in different manners, I provide alternate ways of reading the conflict.

Setting

The setting for this study is a school serving a racially diverse, working class neighborhood in a major city in the Northeastern United States.

Participants

The participants were members of their school's GSA.

Research Design

This is a qualitative site-based investigation. I collected data by using ethnographic tools including observation, interviewing, and document collection. Specifically, I sought to gather data on different actors’ different understandings of the conflict over the bulletin board. I analyzed data by using methods of naturalistic qualitative analysis and semiotics-focused discourse analysis.

Findings

Study participants read the conflict over the bulletin board in different manners. Each reading construed the conflict as (re)building school spaces in particular ways. Crucially, each construction either validated or invalidated LGBTIQ identities in the space of the school.

Conclusions

No one reading of the conflict and no one construction of the space of the school were necessarily “conclusive” or “correct.” Rather, the meaning of the conflict and the features of school space were struggled over and negotiated by actors at the school. These struggles highlight how conflicts over meaning are often disagreements over the construction and inhabitance of social spaces. In light of these findings, researchers should expand their analyses of student activism to consider how, through semiotic activity, activists work to rebuild and act in school spaces. Furthermore, researchers should produce studies helpful to activists working to build schools as more just and inclusive environments.
Toward an Integral Approach for Evolving Mindsets for Generative Learning and Timely Action in the Midst of Ambiguity
Authors: Yorks Lyle , Nicolaides Aliki
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

The implications of complexity theory have become a recurring topic in the literatures of a wide range of scholarly and professional fields including adult education. This paper builds on literature calling attention to the educational need for pedagogically addressing the implications of the intensifying complexity in the environments that confront adults in their professional and personal lives.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study

Three theoretical streams, (a) Complex adaptive systems; (b) learning through experience; and, (c) adult developmental theory provide the basis for the pedagogical approach that is presented. The focus is on contingently applying these distinct streams of theory into learning designs. We share our experiences in experimenting with course designs for preparing adult learners for taking action on personal, civic, and professional challenges embedded in ambiguity and uncertainty in which rigid application of ready-made solutions is not possible. Our goal is to stimulate deeper experimentation. Accordingly, the question guiding this paper is, “How can we as adult educators create conditions in our classrooms, and other learning venues, for addressing the need for preparing adults to mindfully learn through the challenges that confront them in the context of increasing complexity?”

Setting

For purposes of illustrating our experience and provoking questions, we draw on examples from our work in three graduate level courses in distinct disciplinary settings—specifically, organizational psychology and adult learning, adult education, and technology management.

Research Design

This paper is an analytical essay drawing out the implications for generative learning from an integrative literature review connecting the three theoretical streams identified above that guide our thinking and work. We provide a framework for creating generative learning spaces based on the implications drawn from this integrative literature review, along with examples of application.

Conclusions/Recommendations

Our experiences in a range of settings suggests that applying the framework can provide educative structures in which adults may stretch their capacity to make meaning, and learn how make choices for timely action, under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity generated by the complexity their socio-economic environments. The approach also provokes new challenges for faculty as well as students, challenges that require more systemic research. We conclude with an agenda for future research.
Trusting Our Judgment: Measurement and Accountability for Educational Outcomes
Authors: Steiner David M.
Published: November 2021

Background/Context

Education policymakers across the country face an urgent problem: we know there is wide disparity in teacher effectiveness, but we lack meaningful tools to identify and reward the most effective teachers or to ensure that the least effective improve or leave the classroom.

Purpose

This article considers the value of the national move toward value-added measures and our current fascination with objective measurements – a fascination that stems from our collective distrust of our teachers and ourselves, and our reluctance to make judgments about the substantive narratives we teach students.

Research Design

This is an analytical and reflective piece that draws upon the author's experience serving as New York State Commissioner of Education and dean of a teacher education institution in New York City.

Conclusions

Value-added measures of teachers’ impact on student learning are an imperfect but important tool; however, by often refusing to take responsibility for what is worth teaching, we risk cutting off important opportunities for democratic education and ultimately impoverishing students’ own ability to make meaningful judgments about their world, regardless of their test scores.
Student Off-Task Behavior in Computer-Based Learning in the Philippines: Comparison to Prior Research in the USA
Authors: Rodrigo Ma. Mercedes T. , Baker Ryan S. J. D. , Rossi Lisa
Published: November 2021

Background

Off-task behavior can be defined as any behavior that does not involve the learning task or material, or where learning from the material is not the primary goal. One suggested path for understanding how to address off-task behavior is to study classrooms where off-task behavior is less common, particularly in Asia, in order to understand why off-task behavior is less common in those settings.

Purpose

In this paper, we discuss three studies that examine the differences in the off-task behavior of students using intelligent tutoring software in the Philippines and the United States. We investigate whether Filipino students using intelligent tutors exhibit significantly less off-task behavior than their American counterparts, in line with the previously observed patterns of off-task behavior in traditional classrooms in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Using identical intelligent tutors in both countries allows us to control for confounds due to differences in curricula.

Research Design

In the first study, approximately matched cohorts of students in classrooms in the United States and Philippines used the same educational software (the Scatterplot Tutor) for an equal amount of time and according to an identical research protocol. In the second and third studies, students in the Philippines used different intelligent tutoring systems for a fixed amount of time.

Data Collection and Analysis

As students used the software, researchers used a quantitative field observation protocol to record their behaviors. From the quantitative field observations, we computed an approximate percentage of time that each student was off-task and then calculated the average time off-task for each group under study. An additional behavior, gaming the system (intentional misuse of educational software) was also coded.

Findings

In the first study, students in the United States were off-task, on average, seven times more than students in the Philippines. Interestingly, however, the proportion of gaming the system was higher in the Philippines than in the United States. In the second and third studies, the incidence of off-task behavior was comparable to the frequency of off-task behavior in the Philippines in the first study, and substantially lower than the frequency of off-task behavior in the United States in the first study or in prior research on off-task behavior in the United States.

Conclusions / Recommendations

The results of the first study suggest that the previously observed differences in off-task behavior between the United States and Asia cannot be attributed simply to differences in curricula. Understanding the relative roles of cultural factors and past experiences with adaptive educational technology in student off-task behavior is an important area of future work.