AN INTEGRATION PROGRAM

This is an account of a teacher education program's attempt to connect with a neighboring community in order to better prepare faculty to teach about the urban context in which their preservice teacher education students practice. Taking a feminist perspective, the two authors discuss their goals—the processes of using a community organization to lead the discussion and obstacles inherent to university settings. Knowledge about urban communities is an area that is often neglected in teacher preparation and one that needs to be more fully considered.     

Using Action Research to Innov8: Facilitating Culture Shifts in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

ABSTRACT

The mission of a community college is distinct from a research one university, where empirical research is valued over investigation of discipline-based teaching and learning. The open-access, affordable, workforce, and transfer emphasis that serves many non-traditional community college students is a rich, meaningful environment for fostering the scholarship of teaching and learning, yet despite an emphasis on best practices and student success outcomes, teaching, and learning in this environment is an underappreciated element of the faculty role. This study explores the use of action research to facilitate engagement in the scholarship of teaching and instructional innovation. The mixed-method action research design incorporated quantitative and qualitative analysis from a wide variety of data sources and triangulated findings through a variation of techniques, including ongoing researcher dialogue and ratings. Action research serves as both the method for this study and the mechanism for faculty research on classroom innovations. This was substantiated as a catalyst for cultivating ongoing inquiry and professional growth. The Innov8 program and integration of action research appears to have a long-term, substantive impact on faculty perspectives, specifically influencing faculty culture, continued educational investigation, and ultimately student learning outcomes.     

Cultural identity central to Native American persistence in science

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Native Americans are the least represented population in science fields. In recent years, undergraduate and graduate level summer research programs that...     

Keyboarding Difficulties: Frequency and Characteristics among Higher Education Students with Handwriting Difficulties

Word processing is often considered an alternative writing mode or test accommodation for students with specific learning disorders who have handwriting difficulties (HD). Therefore, it is important for researchers and educators to understand the difficulties these students may encounter while using this technology. We examined the frequency of keyboarding difficulties (KD; i.e., slow keyboarding) among higher education students with HD, and the underlying functions (language, fine-motor, and attention) of these disabilities compared to students with only HD. Of the 50 students with HD, 24 percent were found to have KD. This group had significantly lower scores in phonological and orthographic skills, but not in fine-motor and attention functions, compared to students with HD alone. These results support models suggesting that handwriting and keyboarding share linguistic processes. They also suggest that for students with lower linguistic functions, word processing via keyboarding may not be an effective writing mode, and that these students may require tailored accommodation.