Developing Empathy Through Design Thinking in Elementary Art Education

Past research has suggested incorporating design thinking in upper elementary art education helps students develop what are known as the Four Cs: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. As an instructional strategy, design thinking focuses on empathy first and provides a structure for students to work through real-world, complex problems in small groups. This exploratory qualitative case study examined the effects of teaching empathy through design thinking in upper elementary art education. Eight teachers participated, representing public, private, charter, and independent school settings. Data included student observations, interviews, and journal reflections. An analysis of findings resulted in three conclusions: (a) design thinking can foster the development of empathy in preadolescents, (b) art education curricula at the upper elementary level can include design thinking, and (c) design thinking is a valid strategy for teaching empathy. Including empathy within art education promotes a classroom culture that is respectful and understanding of others, with students becoming advocates of justice, equity, and inclusion. As society continues to struggle with bullying, physical violence, and social unrest, teaching empathy has the potential to change how students relate to each other in the classroom, and, ultimately, in the world at large.     

Supporting child and family resilience in the face of political violence: Evidence from a home visit parenting program

Political violence affects more than 25% of children globally, yet little is known about how to support positive adaptation among conflict-affected children. Using a sample of 3797 Nicaraguan child-caregiver dyads (M_AgeTime1 = 1.5 years, M_AgeTime2 = 5.9 years; 51% male), this registered report used a novel quasi-experimental approach to examine how exposure to political violence relates to child and caregiver outcomes, and to test three policy-relevant moderators: participation in a large-scale home visit parenting program, household economic disruption, and media exposure. Results revealed positive associations between political violence and harsh discipline practices (0.33 SD), but there was no evidence that political violence affected children's behavior, caregiver depressive symptoms, or responsive parenting practices, and there was no evidence of moderation.     

Code-switching 101: Black women counselor educators’ personal and professional identity development

The perceptions of personal and professional identity development from four Black women counselor educators were examined through a collaborative autoethnography methodology. Themes identified include (a) intentionality of code-switching, (b) inextricable identities, (c) fight for and with authenticity, and (d) mutual development of personal and professional identities.     

Effective ranking and search techniques for Web resources considering semantic relationships

On the Semantic Web, the types of resources and the semantic relationships between resources are defined in an ontology. By using that information, the accuracy of information retrieval can be improved.     

Interactive Influences of Perceived Social Contexts on the Reading Achievement of Urban Middle Schoolers with Learning Disabilities

This study examined the effects of social influences in the lives of an ethnically diverse sample of fifth through eighth grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD) using survey data and academic achievement scores collected in 19 Chicago public schools from 1993–1997. Similarities and differences in student perceptions of school, family, and peer group contexts were examined. In addition, longitudinal data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to identify contextual influences on changes in student reading achievement over time. Comparisons of student responses confirm and extend existing findings in the literature concerning the perceptions of students with LD of their social environments. In particular, having a learning disability was associated with consistent, mostly negative, effects on social relations across the contexts of students’ lives, regardless of gender, race, grade, and socioeconomic status. In addition, student perceptions of their friendship groups were found to have small, but significant, effects on their growth in reading achievement over the course of middle school. While students with and without LD had somewhat different views of their social contexts, the processes working within these environments appeared to affect their reading achievement in similar ways. The results suggest that careful attention should be paid to the social contexts of students’ lives when planning academic interventions.