bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Policy Implications of Education Informatics
Authors: Carr Jo Ann , O'Brien Nancy P. 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context This concluding article identifies the policy implications of education informatics and explores impacts of current copyright laws, legislative structures, publishing practices, and education organizations. Synthesizing the discussions in the preceding articles, this article highlights the importance of designing information systems to promote open access to information in order to support scholarly communications and provide for the application of scholarship to practice within the field of education. Specific steps are proposed to further advance education informatics and to anchor it within constantly changing technologies in order to address pedagogical, curricular, and policy issues within education. Purpose This article is designed to propose future directions for the development of the field of education informatics and promote additional research. Research Design Information in this article is based on a brief literature review and an analysis of the interrelated implications of the articles in this issue for policy development in education informatics. Conclusions Although education informatics as a term has been used since at least 1980, there is limited literature about this term. This lack of discussion about the integration of education informatics principles and content in copyright and other legislation, in formal education, and in information dissemination practices indicates that education informatics has had little impact as a field of study within the discipline of education. Policy changes at the federal and state government levels and within educational organizations and associations will be needed to promote the development of education informatics as a core part of the discipline of education. Full development of the field of education informatics will require diverse policy changes by multiple audiences. One specific policy change that will be needed is strengthening collaborative copyright as part of the Copyright Commons. This and other changes should focus on improving access to current and historical education literature from both formal and informal channels for scholarly, practitioner, community, and policy audiences. Additionally, schools and colleges of education should create programs of study in education informatics. Consideration of user needs and mobile access to information should drive policy changes in the organization of classrooms, learning, and teacher educator programs. Most of all, policy changes need leadership that is guided by a commitment to the alignment of federal, state, regional, and local data distribution and to the creation of partnerships to align policy with practice and a vision of the role of education informatics in the discipline and practice of education.
Programmatic Role of Education Libraries in Informatics to Support Preservice Teacher Preparation Programs
Authors: Farmer Lesley 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context The management, processing, and transformation of information constitute central tasks in education. Education informatics intersects the theories and practices of both informatics and education. In particular, informatics aids in the systematic incorporation of technology as educational stakeholders represent, process, and communicate information effectively. The systematic study of those informational structures and interactions, particularly the application of technology to discovering and communicating education information—education informatics—is less prevalent. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study As education librarians seek to collaborate with preservice teacher preparation programs, they need to apply informatics principles to optimize the library's ultimate impact on student achievement. Specifically, education librarians need to examine several levels of information processing systems: student, faculty, program, institution, and government entities. Furthermore, education librarians need to identify the conditions or environments of these information systems because the infrastructure, available resources, and knowledge base all impact student learning. Setting The settings for this study were preservice teacher preparation programs and academic libraries. Population/Participants/Subjects The participants were preservice teachers, teacher preparation faculty, and librarians. Research Design This is a secondary analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations With the burden that teacher preparation faculty have in offering a well-rounded and time-efficient program, postsecondary education libraries and their staff can support efforts to address informatics, leveraging their contributions of resources and informatics expertise. Academic librarians have in-depth training in informatics in that they look at information systematically. Particularly in those institutions where librarians are assigned subjects in which to specialize, they can link their professional skill to content-area needs.
Compassionate, Spiritual, and Creative Listening in Teaching and Learning
Authors: Garrison Jim 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Listening is largely overlooked in cultures constituted on the basis of the freedom of speech, such as we find in the United States and elsewhere. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The article explores compassionate listening as a creative spiritual activity. Such listening recognizes the suffering of others in ways that open up possibilities for healing and transformative communication. It is particularly important for a caring profession like teaching and critical for good teaching and learning relationships. Research Design Relying on philosophical reflection, the article mixes some of the basic ideas of Eastern thought revolving around the image of the Bodhisattvas as they who constantly ameliorate suffering. The article concentrates on the Bodhisattva “Perceiver of the World's Sounds.” Conclusions/Recommendation We can only relieve suffering if we attend carefully to the needs, desires, interests, and purposes of others and respond in terms of their best possibility in the situation. Such self-eclipsing allows caregivers to avoid the horrors of conditional love. Such listening lies beyond theory and ideology in the immediate, directly involving sympathetic response, but not pity. It is not the kind of sympathy that assumes that the pain in others has the same characteristics or source as our own.
Curriculum as Colonizer: (Asian) American Education in the Current U.S. Context
Authors: Goodwin A. Lin 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context The United States is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented immigration, with the majority of new arrivals coming from Asia and Latin America, not Europe. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (APIs) represent the fastest growing racial group in the United States, and schools are again being asked to socialize newcomer students, many of whom are APIs. Yet, even as the United States becomes more racially diverse, the national mindset regarding immigrants and immigration ranges from ambivalent to increasingly (and currently) hostile, and is often contradictory. “American” typically is imagined as “White,” and perceptions of APIs and people of color as “other” remain cemented in our collective psyche. It is this sociohistorical-political context that frames the education and socialization of Asian American citizens, immigrants, and their children. Objective/Focus As APIs are absorbed into the fabric of society, how will they define themselves? How will they be defined? This article begins by deconstructing the social category Asian and Pacific Islander in order to reveal the immense diversity contained under this label. The discussion illuminates both the horizontal diversity of APIs—differences between ethnic groups, and vertical diversity—differences within ethnic groups, to underscore the insufficiency of the API label. Against the diverse backdrop that APIs truly (re)present, (Asian) American education framed by three curricular contexts in the United States—the major reforms of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the “model minority” mythology—is theorized using postcolonial theory as an analytic lens. The article concludes with thoughts on how APIs can resist domination and what might be sites of resistance in schools or society. Research Design This is an analytic essay that examines both historical and contemporary educational and policy contexts. Conclusions/Recommendations Curriculum, defined not simply as subject matter content and instructional procedures, but as a tool of acculturation and a depository of (U.S.) national and cultural values, has the power to emancipate or colonize. Each of the three curricular contexts in the United States—the major reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act, culturally relevant pedagogy, and the “model minority” mythology—exemplify the role Curriculum plays in defining, silencing, and/or marginalizing APIs. Imagined sites of resistance against Curriculum as colonizer include this very page, where one voice deliberately pushes back against the obfuscation of fixed realities layered onto people of Asian descent in the United States, the reexamination and revision(ing) of teacher preparation curricula, and the larger policy arena.
Leading Schools of Excellence and Equity: Documenting Effective Strategies in Closing Achievement Gaps
Authors: Brown Kathleen M. , Benkovitz Jen , Muttillo A. J. , Urban Thad 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context In the Fall 2006 issue of AERJ, Hoy, Tarter, and Woolfolk Hoy identified the new construct of academic optimism as a general latent concept related to student achievement even after controlling for SES, previous performance, and other demographic variables. Through structural equation modeling, they found that the collective properties of academic emphasis, collective efficacy, and faculty trust work together in a unified fashion to create positive academic environments. To build a comprehensive theory of academic optimism, Hoy and his colleagues recommended more research in a variety of school settings and more qualitative research to explore roles, experiences, expectations, conditions, and differences of academic optimism in schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this empirical inquiry of state-recognized “Honor Schools of Excellence” was to explore how these schools of distinction are (or are not) promoting and supporting both academic excellence and systemic equity for all students. Research Design In Phase One, quantitative data were collected through equity audits to scan for and then document systemic patterns of equity and inequity across multiple domains of student learning and activities within 24 schools. In Phase Two, the 24 schools were ranked, based solely on minority achievement, and then separated into two types of schools, small gap (SG) schools and large gap (LG) schools. Through site visits (n = 16) and the use of semi-structured interviews with principals, assistant principals, teachers, and parent leaders (n = 80), qualitative data were then collected to document best practices and effective strategies that principals use to confront and change past practices anchored in open and residual racism and class discrimination. The data were analyzed through the theoretical framework of academic optimism. Findings/Results Three differences between the SG schools and the LG schools were found: encouraging academic achievement, offering instructional feedback, and expecting excellence. Conclusions/Recommendations To truly honor excellence, we need to embrace equity. As such, the outcomes of interest are better in schools where principals support, model, and monitor a teamwork approach, a balanced approach, a strong sense of purpose, and an insistent disposition to assure that all students are served well and that all are encouraged to perform at their highest level.
Americanizing the West: Protestant and Catholic Missionary Education on the Rosebud Reservation, 1870–1920
Authors: Bennison Sarah 
Published: November 2021

Background This paper challenges the dominant story of Protestant and Catholic conflict by illustrating the critical role that mission schools played in creating denominational consensus in the West. Focus Protestant and Catholic missionaries cast aside their differences as they worked toward common goals to “civilize,” Christianize, and “Americanize” natives on reservations like Rosebud. United as whites against indigenous “others,” these predominantly female missionaries forged new, interdenominational conceptions of American identity through their work in western mission schools. Research Design The article offers historical analysis and interpretation. Conclusions Despite a long historiography emphasizing conflict between these groups, this study of a Protestant school and a Catholic school on Rosebud at the turn of the twentieth century provides new perspectives on the Americanization process at the center of schooling during this period. This examination of missionary education adds to our understanding of educative efforts among Native Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by illustrating how religion, and religious denominationalism, operated on the frontier. Against a long history of missionary work in the West and denominational conflict in the East, Protestants and Catholics alike affirmed their own “American” identity through their work on Rosebud.
A Critical Look at Choice Options as Solutions to Milwaukee's Schooling Inequities
Authors: Chapman Thandeka K. , Antrop-González René 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context The lack of court-ordered support for race-based policies that maintain and create integrated schools has forced communities of color to seek other avenues to obtain equitable education, such as school choice. Individual states and the federal government, as seen in grant provisions through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, are encouraging the expansion of choice at the very time that options for increasing student diversity, particularly racial diversity, are being narrowed by the courts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The article uses critical race theory to examine the outcomes of specific school reforms, based on market theory models of school choice, that were designed to alleviate schooling inequities in urban districts. Setting The context of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serves as a microcosm of urban districts that have embraced school choice to create more equitable schooling options. Milwaukee, like most metropolitan areas, has a history of court-ordered desegregation that served as a temporary solution to racially segregated schools. Given the federal and district court turn from supporting race-based desegregation policies in schools, Milwaukee and other metropolitan districts are looking for new models to serve students of color in their districts and cities. Research Design This article is a conceptual paper that incorporates data from a variety of sources to support the authors’ conclusions. Data Collection and Analysis Data for this project were taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, documents from newly created small high schools, such as Web sites and curriculum designs; current newspaper articles discussing issues of small high schools; archival newspaper articles documenting the creation of the 1990 choice and charter programs; professional experiences as a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates institutional selection and small-school team support system; and an empirical study that documents teachers’ attempts to provide curriculum and instruction in newly created small schools. Conclusions/Recommendations In combination, these data sources tell the story of market theory reforms that will continue to struggle to meet reformists’ goals to serve all Milwaukee populations so long as policy makers and the courts continue to deny the irrefutable power that race and class exercise in parental choice in U.S. urban schools.
What do you See? The Supreme Court Decision in PICS and the Resegregation of Two Southern School Districts
Authors: Anderson Celia Rousseau 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context In June 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to prohibit student assignment on the basis of race. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (hereafter referred to as PICS), the court deemed race-based strategies used to voluntarily desegregate school districts to be unconstitutional. Although the ruling certainly has important practical implications for the desegregation of U.S. schools, the PICS decision is also significant for what it reflects about the climate surrounding school segregation. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study One purpose of this article is to examine the larger landscape of contemporary views in which the PICS decision is situated. As such, the focus is less on the specific impact on student assignment policies and more on the broader picture of desegregation and education. A second purpose of this article is to illustrate the important role that critical race theory (CRT) can play in viewing these issues. Specifically, the author uses CRT to analyze the historical and contemporary conditions of two adjacent school districts and to connect the conditions in these districts to the PICS ruling. Insofar as neither district, at least on the surface, was directly impacted by the PICS decision in a practical sense, these cases provide a different means through which to understand the potential significance of PICS. Research Design This article is an analytic essay that draws on both historical accounts and contemporary descriptive data from the two school districts. Conclusions/Recommendations The data reviewed in this article highlight the ongoing resegregation of the two districts. I argue that this resegregation is tied to collective definitions of segregation that are supported by color-blindness and the valuing of private choice. These collective definitions are also clearly reflected in PICS and represent the connection between the Supreme Court decision and the conditions in two districts that ostensibly are not impacted by the ruling. Insofar as these collective definitions shape the way that we view school segregation, we will not be able to address the ongoing inequity tied to segregation until we change what we see.
How Do Teachers Support Students’ Motivation and Learning in Their Classrooms?
Authors: Anderman Lynley , Andrzejewski Carey E. , Allen Jennifer 
Published: November 2021

Background/Context Despite the importance of students’ active engagement for learning, little is known about how teachers create environments that are supportive of students’ positive motivational and learning-related beliefs. Furthermore, most of the studies that have described teacher practices in relation to students’ perceptions of their classroom context have focused on elementary and middle school populations; much less is known about creating supportive contexts for high school students. We conceptualized supportive instructional contexts as multidimensional, developing a profile of student perceptions that would define a classroom that would promote and sustain students’ motivation and learning, based on the literature on classroom motivation. This profile included perceptions of the motivational climate, the social climate, and the academic climate of the classroom. Purpose and Research Questions The goal of this study was to identify high school teachers who were perceived by their students as creating classroom contexts that were particularly supportive of students’ motivation and learning, and to describe their practice. The analysis was guided by these questions: How do effective high school teachers create classroom contexts that students perceive as supportive of their motivation and engagement? What underlying commonalities describe these teachers’ instructional practices? A secondary question focused on whether there were any discernible differences between the contexts of high school science and social studies classes, or associated with teachers’ gender. Participants Students (N = 2,864) in Grades 9–12 from three high schools and 4 of their teachers (2 science and 2 social studies), identified based on students’ survey reports. Research Design Teachers were identified for observation based on students’ reported perceptions of the instructional contexts of their classes. Observation field notes were analyzed thematically to develop a grounded model of teachers’ instructional practices. Conclusions/Recommendations Analysis of the field notes suggested a model that consists of three core themes: supporting understanding, building and maintaining rapport, and managing the classroom. Within this framework, a number of the teacher practices described served more than one of these three functions, and some, such as teacher movement and the use of varied participation structures, served all three. All the observed characteristics of practice were consistent across subject area domains, and differences in relation to teachers’ gender were evident only in terms of teachers’ use of humor in the classroom.