bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
On Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Praxis and the Foundations of Liberation Education
Authors: Glass Ronald David
Published: June 2007

This essay examines the ontological and epistemological foundations of Paulo Freire’s philosophy of praxis and critiques the structure of his argument. It outlines a more consistent historicist interpretation of liberation education that retains the liberatory power of modernism and its critique of dehumanization, recognizes the malleability and contradictions of identity, embraces epistemic uncertainties and the varieties of reason in knowledge, and respects the plural conceptions of the good which can shape moral and political life. Finally, the essay argues that this understanding of liberation education requires an ethics grounded in militant nonviolence.
“Posts” Perspectives on Anti-Oppressive Education in Social Studies, English, Mathematics, and Science Classrooms
Authors: Kumashiro Kevin K.
Published: June 2007

What could it mean for educators within the “core disciplines” to teach in ways that challenge multiple forms of oppression? This article explores the implications of various “posts” perspectives on anti-oppressive education—especially poststructuralist perspectives—for social studies, English, mathematics, and science classrooms. The author focuses on two main theoretical constructs: unknowability, multiplicity, and looking beyond the known; and resistance, crisis, and resignifying the self. Implications for teacher education conclude the article.
Knowing What We Know: Children,Teachers, Researchers
Authors: Snow Catherine E.
Published: June 2007

Issues within the educational research community concern the correct relation between research and practice, the status of various sorts of research-based knowledge, and methodological squabbles between practitioners of different research traditions. These issues reflect the intrinsic difficulty of knowing in complex domains. In this article, child language development is taken as a (neutral) field in which to contemplate the nature of knowledge, and three generalizations about knowledge are formulated and exemplified from data on language acquisition: (1) Becoming knowledgeable about any complex domain requires a balance between going beyond the known and being constrained by what experts have already discovered; (2) In the right environment, one can perform quite skillfully despite quite low levels of autonomous competence; nonetheless, skilled performance is typically poorer than one’s level of knowledge about how to perform would predict; (3) The capacity to reflect on and analyze one’s knowledge emerges only after considerable knowledge has been accumulated and embedded into practice. The reflections of skilled practitioners in any field deserve to be systematized so that personal knowledge can become publicly accessible and subject to analysis.
Three’s Not a Crowd: Plans, Roles, and Focus in the Arts
Authors: Heath Shirley Brice
Published: June 2007

Colleges and universities, as well as employers, attend to the “extras”—the extracurricular that take place outside and beyond grades and jobs. Final admission judgments and job interview questions often center on the sports, artistic, or service dimensions that individuals include in their applications or resumes. Parents, politicians, and educators know and unquestioningly accept the nonstandard and unquantifiable nature of the social benefits of these extras. Yet almost nothing is known about the learning—cognitive and situative—that actually goes on beyond classroom hours on sports teams, in community organizations, or through voluntary community service. Schools and families, as the critical duo of learning source and assessor of the knowledge and skills of the young, receive the vast majority of public attention and funding initiatives. The third arena of learning, that which takes place beyond classroom and home, is generally left unattended, minimally supported, and almost completely unexamined. Identified here through illustration from arts-based extraschool activities are (1) key features of this third environment and its positive learning opportunities, (2) the creative and critical power of youth work in the arts, particularly the visual arts and dance, and (3) the manifest reasoning and organizing properties of the “extra education” situated in this arena’s coordination of actions and roles.
Educational Research in the Internet Age: Examining the Role of Individual Characteristics
Authors: Hartley Kendall , Bendixen Lisa D.
Published: June 2007

The use of the Web and other computer-based technologies in classrooms has become quite prevalent. Previous Research News and Comment discussions have presented the opportunities for research and practice that accompany these relatively new tools for classrooms. This article presents a perspective that has garnered less attention in discussions of these new learning environments—learner characteristics. Contemporary theories in educational psychology present important implications for learning in this new environment. This article will address two learner characteristics deemed important in mainstream educational psychology literature, epistemological beliefs and self-regulatory skills. Following the lead of previous articles, this article will also address the implications for access to education and learning.
Travelers and Trolls: Practitioner Research and Institutional Review Boards
Authors: Pritchard Ivor A.
Published: June 2007

Practitioner research is a growing form of educational research that presents distinctive ethical issues concerning the protection of research subjects. These issues are also evident in similar forms of action-oriented research carried out in natural settings. Some Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) have been criticized for drawing inappropriate conclusions in their reviews of proposed practitioner research projects. This article seeks to explain some of the factors creating the conflicts and misunderstandings among practitioner researchers and IRBs in hopes of ameliorating these difficulties. Although some difficulties are readily resolvable, fundamental societal rifts exist in the ethical perspectives from which judgments about the ethical propriety of such projects should be made, and the disputes derived from these rifts are not so easy to fix.
Three Readings of D. Butin’s Commentary
Authors: Kumashiro Kevin K.
Published: June 2007

This response explores three different ways to “read” Butin’s commentary—reading with insistence, reading for resistance, and reading beyond—and argues that each reading makes possible different contributions to anti-oppressive educational research and practice.
Teaching Culture as National and Transnational: A Response to Teachers’ Work
Authors: Anderson-Levitt Kathryn M.
Published: June 2007

This comment applauds the blending of global culture and national culture perspectives. It proposes a more systematic synthesis and discusses what it means to take both transnational parallels and cultural variation seriously.
Educational Judgment: Linking the Actor and the Spectator
Authors: Coulter David , Wiens John R.
Published: June 2007

The difficulty of connecting the knowledge generated by educational researchers and the practice of classroom teachers is familiar. Academics write about the importance of research for understanding and improving classroom practices; classroom teachers dismiss the academics’ research knowledge as a poor substitute for actual experience. We argue for moving from debates between spectators and actors about knowledge and practice to discussions about how all educators can foster good judgment. We outline two major accounts of judgment in Western thought, Aristotle’s and Kant’s, which ultimately privilege the spectator over the actor. We then introduce the work of Hannah Arendt, who linked thinking and acting without privileging either in her conception of judgment. Focusing on how teachers and researchers might become better educational judges is a crucial, yet neglected, agenda that promises to link these communities.
Web Surveys to Digital Movies: Technological Tools of the Trade
Authors: Fetterman David M.
Published: June 2007

The purpose of this discussion is to highlight some of the technological tools of our trade. The irony in sharing information about Webbased tools is that many remain current for about a nanosecond. Bleeding-edge tools and applications are purposely excluded from this discussion. A select set of Internet or Webbased tools that have survived the novelty stage are presented, including Web surveys, digital photography, voice recognition, file sharing, videoconferencing on the Internet, instantaneous chat rooms, and digital movies. Benefits and a few cautions are presented.
Reflecting on Research for Doctoral Students in Education
Authors: Anderson Gary L.
Published: June 2007

This response to the theme issue, Research for Doctoral Students in Education, argues that the continua presented in the articles fail to legitimize practitioner research, that is, research done by school practitioners on site. Issues relating to differences in rigor, status, and purpose between practitioner and other research are discussed.
Qualitative Analysis on Stage: Making the Research Process More Public
Authors: Anfara Vincent A. , Brown Kathleen M. , Mangione Terri L.
Published: June 2007

Discussions regarding standards for assessing qualitative research have not sufficiently addressed questions concerning the privatization of this type of analysis. In response to this dilemma, the authors of this article address some of the strategies that they have employed in working with doctoral students and offer suggestions for assessing and publicly disclosing the methodological rigor and analytical defensibility of qualitative research. Specifically, tabular strategies are introduced for use in documenting the relationship between data sources and a study’s research questions, the development of themes and categories, and the triangulation of findings. Examples from three dissertations are provided.
Comment: Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research
Authors: Erickson Frederick , Gutierrez Kris
Published: June 2007

In this article the authors argue that both the Feuer, Towne, and Shavelson article and the larger National Research Council (NRC) report on which it is based must be understood in the context of current federal discourse that focuses narrowly on experimentally derived causal explanations of educational program effectiveness. Although the authors concur with much of the Feuer et al. article and the NRC report, they are concerned that the NRC committee, by accepting uncritically its charge to define the scientific in educational research, produced a statement that risks being read as endorsing both the possibility and the desirability of taking an evidence-based social engineering approach to educational improvement nationwide. Finally, the authors review the consequences of not challenging the layperson’s “white coat” notion of science and replacing it with a more complicated and realistic view of what actual scientists do and the varied and complex methods and perspectives they employ in their inquiry.
Reply to Commentators on “Scientific Culture and Educational Research”
Authors: Feuer Michael J. , Towne Lisa , Shavelson Richard J.
Published: June 2007

The authors reiterate their core argument that harnessing the epistemological and methodological diversity of the field to advance its common goals is difficult but essential work. And in keeping with the spirit of their article and the Scientific Research in Education report on which it is based, they encourage further debate and self-reflection in the field about these important issues
Service Learning as Scholarship in Teacher Education
Authors: Buchanan Alice M. , Baldwin Shelia C. , Rudisill Mary E.
Published: June 2007

This article describes how two teacher education service-learning programs illustrate alternative interpretations of scholarship. A tutoring–mentoring program in a teaching oriented masters institution and a motor skill development program in a land grant doctoral–research institution are described relative to how each illustrates forms of scholarship as interpreted by Boyer (1990) We discuss how these forms of scholarship—the scholarship of discovery, integration, teaching, and application—relate to stated institutional mission and evaluation practices. Service-learning experiences for preservice teachers can have the multiple benefits of promoting an ethic of service and social responsibility, demonstrating excellence in teacher education, and exemplifying scholarly endeavors
The Role of Design in Research: The Integrative Learning Design Framework
Authors: Bannan-Ritland Brenda
Published: June 2007

In this article, a general model is proposed for design research in education that grows out of the author’s research and work in related design fields. The model emphasizes the stage sensitivity of (a) research questions, (b) data and methods, and (c) the need for researchers to design artifacts, processes, and analyses at earlier stages in their research that can then be profitably used (perhaps by different researchers) in later stages.
On the Science of Education Design Studies
Authors: Shavelson Richard J. , Phillips D. C. , Towne Lisa , Feuer Michael J.
Published: June 2007

The authors argue that design studies, like all scientific work, must comport with guiding scientific principles and provide adequate warrants for their knowledge claims. The issue is whether their knowledge claims can be warranted. By their very nature, design studies are complex, multivariate, multilevel, and interventionist, making warrants particularly difficult to establish. Moreover, many of these studies, intended or not, rely on narrative accounts to communicate and justify their findings. Although narratives often purport to be true, there is nothing in narrative form that guarantees veracity. The authors provide a framework that links design-study research questions as they evolve over time with corresponding research methods. In this way, an integration can be seen of research methods focused on discovery with methods focused on validation of claims.
Exploring Modeling Aspects of Design Experiments
Authors: Sloane Finbarr C. , Gorard Stephen
Published: June 2007

In this article the authors use the process of model building (model formulation, fit, and validation) in applied settings to raise pertinent questions about design experiment (DE) methodology. We argue that the DE work presented in this issue highlights features of model formulation and local validation, but does not discuss model fitting or broader models of validation. This article marks out key areas for the DE community to address and concludes by positing that the concept of artifact failure in design research may be a more appropriate area of concern when designing an artifact (whether the artifact is a learning process or a software product). DE research is relatively new as an educational research method (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992). We believe that DE researchers and the more general research methodology communities must work together to fully evaluate and reap the potential rewards of this developing research method.
An Anatomy of Narrative Curricula
Authors: Conle Carola
Published: June 2007

As curricular qualities of various narrative practices become more diverse and widely established, a clearer understanding of their particular nature and function should accompany their use. This article reviews rather far-flung practices in relation to the particular narrative functions on which they rely. The author uses Schwab’s commonplaces as common denominators that cut across practices to determine different locations for curricular gain. Then, without wanting to tear apart what is essentially a holistic phenomenon, the author looks at narrative curricula through three different lenses, named by Genette (1980) “narrative,” “story,” and “narrating.” These facets of narrative are highlighted in different ways in various curricula, prompting different forms of narrative engagement. They help locate and distinguish different outcomes.
The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers
Authors: Labaree David F.
Published: June 2007

In this article, some difficulties are examined involving turning educational practitioners into educational researchers at American education schools. Teachers bring many traits that are ideal for this new role. At the same time, students and professors in researcher training programs often encounter a cultural clash between the world-views of the teacher and researcher. Students may feel they are being asked to transform their cultural orientation from normative to analytical, from personal to intellectual, from particular to universal, and from experiential to theoretical. They often resist. Differences in worldview between teachers and researchers cannot be eliminated easily because they arise from irreducible differences in the nature of the work that teachers and researchers do.
Why We Need to Re-Think Race and Ethnicity in Educational Research
Authors: Lee Carol D.
Published: June 2007

This introduction describes the rationale for a special theme issue, “Reconceptualizing Race and Ethnicity in Educational Research.” The rationale includes the historical and contemporary ways that cultural differences have been positioned in educational research and the need for more nuanced and complex analyses of ethnicity and race.
Accountability: Responsibility and Reasonable Expectations
Authors: Linn Robert L.
Published: June 2007

Some of the central features of current educational accountability systems are discussed using the requirements under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 as the primary example. It is argued that broadly shared responsibility is needed for accountability systems to contribute to improved education. It is also suggested that systems need to be designed in ways that are consistent with research and past experience. This requires the setting of ambitious performance standards and improvement targets, but ones that can reasonably be achieved given sufficient effort and supporting resources. These design features are contrasted with the NCLB requirements. Illustrations of some of the state responses to the NCLB demands that attempt to avoid the over-identification of schools for improvement and sanctions are provided.
Educators as "Seed People" Growing a New Future
Authors: Delpit Lisa
Published: June 2007

In the following text of her Dewitt Wallace- Reader’s Digest Distinguished Lecture at the 2003 AERA annual meeting, Lisa Delpit argues that educators must look beyond standardized test scores and scripted instructional programs if their desire is to educate all children. Educators must cease questioning the capacity of low income, students of color and, instead, create rigorous, engaging instruction based on knowing who the students are, including their cultural, intellectual, historical, and political legacies. Furthermore, they must look to pre-integration African-American institutions where “counternarratives” were developed to affirm Black intelligence and provide the motivation for students to achieve.
Shaping Up the Practice of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing
Authors: Wainer Howard , Robinson Daniel H.
Published: June 2007

Recent criticisms of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) have appeared in education and psychology research journals (e.g., Cohen, 1990 , 1994 ; Kupfersmid, 1988 ; Rosenthal, 1991 ; Rosnow & Rosenthal, 1989; Shaver, 1985 ; Sohn, 2000 ; Thompson, 1994 , 1997 ; see also Research in the Schools [1998]). In this article we discuss these criticisms for both current use of NHST and plausible future use. We suggest that the historical use of such procedures was reasonable and that current users might spend time profitably reading some of Fisher’s applied work. However, we also believe that modifications to NHST and to the interpretations of its outcomes might better suit the needs of modern science. Our primary conclusion is that NHST is most often useful as an adjunct to other results (e.g., effect sizes) rather than as a stand-alone result. We cite some examples, however, where NHST can be profitably used alone. Last, we find considerable experimental support for a less rigid attitude toward the interpretation of the probability yielded from such procedures.
Transitions and Trajectories for Studies of Expertise
Authors: Lajoie Susanne P.
Published: June 2007

The transition from student to expert professional can be accelerated when a trajectory for change is plotted and made visible to learners. Trajectories or paths toward expertise are domain specific and must first be documented and then used within instructional contexts to promote knowledge transitions. This article describes how models of expertise can serve to help students attain higher levels of competence.
Celebrating Diversity and Denying Disparities: A Critical Assessment
Authors: Lubienski Sarah Theule
Published: June 2007

In the past, researchers concerned with educational achievement gaps sought to identify underlying causes of those gaps by examining deficiencies of students’ home backgrounds. In reaction against this “blame the victim” approach, scholars have moved toward focusing on positive aspects of diversity. This article raises critical questions about the tradeoffs of framing all diversity as positive. The author contends that such framings divert attention from socioeconomic diversity and obscure larger, structural inequities. Moreover, by avoiding the difficult issues that many marginalized parents, students, and their teachers face daily, educational research risks becoming less useful and credible.
Education Policy Under Cultural Pluralism
Authors: Fuller Bruce
Published: June 2007

Many policymakers are shedding essential tenets of modern statecraft. Few seek to sustain the monolithic one best system of schooling: herding students through large institutions, regulated by bureaucracy and guided by professionals under monopolistic conditions. Instead, distinctly unmodern forms of policy and institutional reformation are in ascendance: even when common aims of schooling are advanced, big and impersonal schools are yielding to small and communal ones; networks of alternative schools that offer options to diverse families are preferred over tightly coupled systems; and the meaning of equity is being recast along relativist lines of communities and kids simply being different. The de-centered arrangement of charter schools and preschooling illuminates these shifts away from modern tenets of policymaking, strongly powered by cultural pluralism and political demands from below. These policy cases prompt the long-term question of how government can effectively balance this press for particular forms of schooling and community building, against its modern impulse to integrate groups via large institutions.
Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education
Authors: Maxwell Joseph A.
Published: June 2007

A National Research Council report, Scientific Research in Education, has elicited considerable criticism from the education research community, but this criticism has not focused on a key assumption of the report—its Humean, regularity conception of causality. It is argued that this conception, which also underlies other arguments for “scientifically-based research,” is narrow and philosophically outdated, and leads to a misrepresentation of the nature and value of qualitative research for causal explanation. An alternative, realist approach to causality is presented that supports the scientific legitimacy of using qualitative research for causal investigation, reframes the arguments for experimental methods in educational research, and can support a more productive collaboration between qualitative and quantitative researchers.
Ecologies of Parental Engagement in Urban Education
Authors: Barton Angela Calabrese , Drake Corey , Perez Jose Gustavo , St. Louis Kathleen , George Magnia
Published: June 2007

What we know about parental involvement in schools cuts across two areas: how and why parental involvement is important and the structural barriers that impede parental participation. However, it has been difficult to construct an account of parental involvement, grounded in everyday practice that goes beyond a laundry list of things that good parents do for their children’s education. In this article we make a case for a new data-driven framework for understanding parental engagement in urban elementary schools, the Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) framework. The EPE framework marks a fundamental shift in how we understand parents’ involvement in their children’s education—a shift from focusing primarily on what parents do to engage with their children’s schools and with other actors within those schools, to also considering how parents understand the hows and whys of their engagement, and how this engagement relates more broadly to parents’ experiences and actions both inside and out of the school community. In explaining this framework, we situate parental engagement as a relational phenomenon that relies on activity networks. In doing so, we highlight the crucial importance that both space and capital play in the relative success parents (and teachers) have in engaging parents in the academic venue of urban schooling. Drawing from our understanding of the intersections between space and capital in the worlds of parents and school, we make the argument that parental engagement ought to be thought of as the mediation between space and capital.
Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come
Authors: Johnson R. Burke , Onwuegbuzie Anthony J.
Published: June 2007

The purposes of this article are to position mixed methods research ( mixed research is a synonym) as the natural complement to traditional qualitative and quantitative research, to present pragmatism as offering an attractive philosophical partner for mixed methods research, and to provide a framework for designing and conducting mixed methods research. In doing this, we briefly review the paradigm “wars” and incompatibility thesis, we show some commonalities between quantitative and qualitative research, we explain the tenets of pragmatism, we explain the fundamental principle of mixed research and how to apply it, we provide specific sets of designs for the two major types of mixed methods research ( mixed-model designs and mixed-method designs), and, finally, we explain mixed methods research as following (recursively) an eight-step process. A key feature of mixed methods research is its methodological pluralism or eclecticism, which frequently results in superior research (compared to monomethod research). Mixed methods research will be successful as more investigators study and help advance its concepts and as they regularly practice it.
Professional Development and Teacher Learning: Mapping the Terrain
Authors: Borko Hilda
Published: June 2007

Teacher professional development is essential to efforts to improve our schools. This article maps the terrain of research on this important topic. It first provides an overview of what we have learned as a field, about effective professional development programs and their impact on teacher learning. It then suggests some important directions and strategies for extending our knowledge into new territory of questions not yet explored.
The Role of Recess in Children's Cognitive Performance and School Adjustment
Authors: Pellegrini Anthony D. , Bohn Catherine M.
Published: June 2007

The authors suggest that the recess period serves a positive purpose in the primary school curriculum, counter to the current practice of minimizing recess in many schools across North America and the United Kingdom. The authors' position is embedded in the larger debate about school accountability; they argue that school policy should be based on the best theory and empirical evidence available. They support their argument for the importance of recess with theory and with experimental and longitudinal data showing how recess breaks maximize children's cognitive performance and adjustment to school.
Telling Identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for Investigating Learning as a Culturally Shaped Activity
Authors: Sfard Anna , Prusak Anna
Published: June 2007

In this article, the authors make an attempt to operationalize the notion of identity to justify the claim about its potential as an analytic tool for investigating learning. They define identity as a set of reifying, significant, endorsable stories about a person. These stories, even if individually told, are products of a collective storytelling. The authors’ main claim is that learning may be thought of as closing the gap between actual identity and designated identity, two sets of reifying significant stories about the learner that are also endorsed by the learner. Empirical illustration comes from a study in which the mathematical learning practices of a group of 17-year-old immigrant students from the former Soviet Union, newly arrived in Israel, were compared with those of native Israelis.
Comparative Studies on U.S. and Chinese Mathematics Learning and the Implications for Standards-Based Mathematics Teaching Reform
Authors: Wang Jian , Lin Emily
Published: June 2007

Chinese students often outperform U.S. students on international tests in mathematics. Chinese students’ mathematics performances are assumed to be related directly to their teachers’ deep mathematics understanding and ability to represent concepts flexibly in their classrooms, which, in turn, are thought to be influenced by Chinese mathematics curriculum and policies. The authors examine this theoretical assumption through a systematic review of relevant literature and attempt to identify the relationship between Chinese students’ mathematics performance and the factors that contribute to their achievement. On the basis of their review, the authors raise questions about the assumption and propose research that can lead to a better understanding of the relationship between the quality of students’ mathematics learning and the contexts in which their learning occurs.
Evidence on “What Works”: An Argument for Extended-Term Mixed-Method (ETMM) Evaluation Designs
Authors: Chatterji Madhabi
Published: June 2007

Federal policy tools for gathering evidence on “What Works” in education, such as the What Works Clearinghouse’s (WWC) standards, emphasize randomized field trials as the preferred method for generating scientific evidence on the effectiveness of educational programs. This article argues instead for extended-term mixed-method (ETMM) designs. Emphasizing the need to consider temporal factors in gaining thorough understandings of programs as they take hold in organizational or community settings, the article asserts that formal study of contextual and site-specific variables with multiple research methods is a necessary prerequisite to designing sound field experiments for making generalized causal inferences. A theoretical rationale and five guiding principles for ETMM designs are presented, with suggested revisions to the WWC’s standards.
The New Teacher Education: For Better or for Worse?
Authors: Cochran-Smith Marilyn
Published: June 2007

This article offers a reading of the current state of the field of teacher education, identifying current reforms, emerging trends, and new underlying premises. The author argues that a “new teacher education” has been emerging with three closely coupled pieces: It is constructed as a public policy problem, based on research and evidence, and driven by outcomes. Illustrating and critiquing each of these pieces, the article makes the case that the new teacher education is both for the better and for the worse. The article concludes that education scholars who care about public education must challenge the narrowest aspects of the emerging new teacher education, building on its most promising aspects and working with others to change the terms of the debate.
A Forward Glance in a Mirror: Diversity Challenged—Access, Equity, and Success in Higher Education
Authors: Allen Walter R.
Published: June 2007

Affirmative action addresses disparities in higher education. Recent trends threaten gains, resegregation is underway nationally. California outlawed affirmative action, the quality of K–12 education is declining, and prison construction is soaring. African American and Latino participation in higher education has declined; both groups are overrepresented in prisons and among the poor. Opponents pretend affirmative action threatens academic quality and promotes reverse discrimination. In fact, economic instability spurs efforts to defend status quo privilege. There is a clash of national ideologies, the American Dream versus White supremacy. Higher education must be a model for society in promoting equity, excellence, and diversity.
Critical Language Awareness in the United States: Revisiting Issues and Revising Pedagogies in a Resegregated Society
Authors: Alim H. Samy
Published: June 2007

As scholars examine the successes and failures of more than 50 years of court-ordered desegregation since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and 25 years of language education of Black youth since Martin Luther King Elementary School Children v. Ann Arbor School District Board, this article revisits the key issues involved in those cases and urges educators and sociolinguists to work together to revise pedagogies. After reviewing what scholars have contributed, the author suggests the need for critical language awareness programs in the United States as one important way in which we can revise our pedagogies, not only to take the students’ language into account but also to account for the interconnectedness of language with the larger sociopolitical and sociohistorical phenomena that help to maintain unequal power relations in a still-segregated society
Measuring Academic Proficiency Under the No Child Left Behind Act: Implications for Educational Equity
Authors: Kim James S. , Sunderman Gail L.
Published: June 2007

The accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 place high-poverty schools and racially diverse schools at a disadvantage because they rely on mean proficiency scores and require all subgroups to meet the same goals for accountability. In this article, student achievement data from six states are used to highlight differences in the demographic characteristics of schools identified as needing improvement and schools meeting the federal adequate yearly progress requirements. School-level data from Virginia and California are used to illustrate that these differences arise both from the selection bias inherent in using mean proficiency scores and from rules that require students in racially diverse schools to meet multiple performance targets. The authors suggest alternatives for the design of accountability systems that include using multiple measures of student achievement, factoring in student improvement on achievement tests in reading and mathematics, and incorporating state accountability ratings of school performance.
Advancing the Conversation: The Roles of Discussants, Session Chairs, and Audience Members at AERA’s Annual Meeting
Authors: Barton Keith C.
Published: June 2007

The value of an academic conference lies in its ability to engage attendees in ongoing scholarly conversations. Such engagement depends on presentations that are intellectually sound and effectively delivered, but it also requires thoughtful participation by discussants, session chairs, and audience members. Shared understanding of the responsibilities that accompany these roles would help advance the conversation of educational scholarship. By adhering to a few simple principles, participants at AERA’s annual meeting could better ensure that the conference lives up to its potential for promoting meaningful dialogue.
Civil Rights, Education Research, and the Courts
Authors: Ancheta Angelo N.
Published: June 2007

This commentary was designed to accompany a series of articles in Educational Researcher, vol. 35, no. 1, a theme issue entitled “Moving Beyond Gratz and Grutter—The Next Generation of Research.” The author discusses the role of education research in civil rights litigation, drawing on historical roots established in Brown v. Board of Education 1954 and exploring recent challenges in cases such as Grutter v. Bollinger 2003. He highlights the roles of scientific research in judicial decision making, which have included informing doctrine and bolstering the rhetorical strength of judicial opinions. Because of the courts’ open-ended use of scientific research, the author concludes that education research can play a valuable role in informing civil rights disputes and policy debates
Prospects for Change at the Nexus of Policy and Design
Authors: Tabak Iris
Published: June 2007

Recent analyses point to the importance of communication and policy representation in understanding and fostering reform success. I propose adopting the idea of a pattern language(Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, Jacobson, Fiksdahl-King, & Angel, 1977) as a profitable direction for policy research on the design of policy documents. A pattern language is a comprehensive set of design elements that integrates abstract and concrete levels of description and notes the interconnections between these elements. In a reform document, the elements would be individual reform recommendations. It is argued that this form of representation, if adopted in standards-based reform documents, could facilitate the construction of shared meaning between policy-makers and reform-implementation agents, while sanctioning and guiding local adaptations that reflect the spirit of the reform
Scaling-Up Exemplary Interventions
Authors: McDonald Sarah-Kathryn , Keesler Venessa Ann , Kauffman Nils J. , Schneider Barbara
Published: June 2007

Scale-up is the practice of introducing proven interventions into new settings with the goal of producing similarly positive effects in larger, more diverse populations. Scale-up research examines factors that influence the effectiveness of interventions as they are brought to scale across settings. This article has three objectives. First, it defines the goals of scale-up research with respect to broader efforts to enhance the quality of educational research and promote evidence-based education. Second, it clarifies the importance of context, conceptually and methodologically, in conducting scale-up research. Finally, it suggests practical guidelines that can assist researchers in developing designs that can be implemented in field settings to produce robust, generalizable findings.
Reclaiming Education’s Doctorates: A Critique and a Proposal
Authors: Shulman Lee S. , Golde Chris M. , Bueschel Andrea Conklin , Garabedian Kristen J.
Published: June 2007

The problems of the education doctorates are chronic and crippling. The purposes of preparing scholars and practitioners are confused; as a result, neither is done well. We must move forward on two fronts simultaneously: rethinking and reclaiming the research doctorate (the Ph.D.), with its strong links to practice, and developing a robust and distinct practice doctorate (the P.P.D.) with a distinctive scholarly base. Unlike most current education Ph.D.s and Ed.D.s, the two degrees would serve distinct purposes, and like their medical analogs—the biomedical Ph.D. and the M.D.—would have different curricula and assessments. Building on lessons learned in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate and in the Carnegie Foundation’s studies of preparation for the professions, we argue that this reform is necessary and possible.
Curriculum-Based Ecosystems: Supporting Knowing From an Ecological Perspective
Authors: Barab Sasha A. , Roth Wolff-Michael
Published: June 2007

The goal of this article is to advance an ecological theory of knowing, one that prioritizes engaged participation over knowledge acquisition. To this end, the authors begin by describing the environment in terms of affordance networks: functionally bound potentials extended in time that can be acted upon to realize particular goals. Although there may be socially agreed-upon trajectories specifying the necessary components of a network activated for realizing a particular goal, the particular network engaged by an individual is dependent on adopted intentions and available effectivity sets, the attunements and behaviors that an individual can enlist to realize an affordance network. Thus, to help clarify the challenges of connecting learners to ecological systems through which affordance networks are activated, the authors use the term life-world, which refers to the environment from the perspective of an individual. Building on their characterization of affordance networks, effectivity sets, and life-worlds, the authors offer an ecological focal point for curricular design.
From the Achievement Gap to the Education Debt: Understanding Achievement in U.S. Schools
Authors: Ladson-Billings Gloria
Published: June 2007

The achievement gap is one of the most talked-about issues in U.S. education. The term refers to the disparities in standardized test scores between Black and White, Latina/o and White, and recent immigrant and White students. This article argues that a focus on the gap is misplaced. Instead, we need to look at the “education debt” that has accumulated over time. This debt comprises historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral components. The author draws an analogy with the concept of national debt—which she contrasts with that of a national budget deficit—to argue the significance of the education debt.
Latino Demographics, Democratic Individuality, and Educational Accountability: A Pragmatist’s View
Authors: Martínez Alemán Ana M.
Published: June 2007

In an era of heightened teacher and school accountability, what are the implications of standards-based reform for individual Latino children and their democratic self-realization? The educational demography of the fastest-growing and largest ethnic group in the United States suggests that the future of Latino self-realization is in jeopardy. This commentary posits that the true malfeasance of accountability policies is the loss of the individual and the erasure of individuality and that, given the realities of Latino educational trajectory and population growth, the Latinization of America is effectively compromised.
When Counter Narratives Meet Master Narratives in the Journal Editorial-Review Process
Authors: Stanley Christine A.
Published: June 2007

The author shares her experiences with the editorial-review process while publishing a qualitative research study on the teaching experiences of African American faculty members at two predominantly White research universities. She likens the experiences of African American faculty members to counter narratives, troubles master narratives in the editorial-review process, draws implications, and makes recommendations for researchers invested in nonmainstream educational research in higher education. This is a call to journal editors and reviewers to examine their roles as disciplinary gatekeepers and to break the cycle of master narratives in educational research and the editorial-review process.
A Person-Oriented Approach to Characterizing Beginning Teachers in Alternative Certification Programs
Authors: Chin Elaine , Young John W.
Published: June 2007

In this article, the authors argue for the use of ecological models of development in studies of teachers prepared through alternative certification (AC) programs. Previous studies of candidates in AC programs have focused on variables that describe their demographic characteristics. An ecological approach focuses on persons and situates their desires and attitudes toward teaching as shaped by their particular life circumstances and personal histories. This approach was applied to a large-scale study of individuals enrolled in California’s teacher internship program. The results are the development of six typological profiles that capture some of the complexities behind why individuals choose to enter teaching through AC routes.
Educational Policy and Practice From the Perspective of Institutional Theory: Crafting a Wider Lens
Authors: Burch Patricia
Published: June 2007

Institutional analyses of public education have increased in number in recent years. However, studies in education drawing on institutional analyses have not fully incorporated recent contributions from institutional theory, particularly relative to other domains such as law and health policy. The author sketches a framework that integrates recent institutional theorizing to guide scholarship on these and other issues in K–12 public education in the United States. The author argues that although concepts such as “loose coupling” have been widely used, education researchers have not fully tapped institutional theories that have emerged more recently. The author introduces three interrelated constructs and applies them to a case study of district reading and mathematics reform. In the final section, the author considers how current developments in the governance of public schooling increase the utility of institutional perspectives and identify critical issues that need to be addressed in future work.
Cross-National Differences in Academic Achievement: Beyond Etic Conceptions of Children's Understandings
Authors: Bempechat Janine , Drago-Severson Eleanor
Published: June 2007

This article reviews theory and research on cross-national (Asian vs. American) differences in academic achievement, and shows that current research: (a) has made claims about achievement motivation with little regard for contemporary theory, and (b) has formed broad assumptions about the influence of culture, while paying cursory attention to the cultural contexts of learning. These difficulties cast doubt on the validity of the accumulated findings, and their practical application in the classroom. We argue that researchers need to integrate the social cognitive approach to achievement motivation–with its focus on beliefs about learning–with principles of cultural psychology–with their focus on culture and context. Further, we stress that qualitative methodologies, emphasizing meaning-making in context, can illuminate the deeper meanings that children and parents attach to school experiences. This will enable us to build grounded theory, and help us seek deeper understandings of similarities and differences within and across cultures.
Cross Cultural Competency and Multicultural Teacher Education
Authors: McAllister Gretchen , Irvine Jacqueline Jordan
Published: June 2007

Teachers require support as they face the challenge of effectively teaching diverse students in their classrooms. Teacher-educators have used various methods to foster change in teachers' thinking, attitudes, and behaviors regarding cultural diversity, but these efforts have produced mixed results because they often focused on content rather the process of cross-cutural learning. The purpose of this review is to examine three process-oriented models that have been used to describe and measure the development of racial identity and cross-cultural competence. These models include Helm's model of racial identity development, Banks's Typology of Ethnicity, and Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. Research using the models revealed insights for multicultural teacher education in assessing readiness to learn, designing effective learning opportunities, and providing appropriate support and challenge for teachers.