Developing and Enacting Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Voices of New Teachers of Color

ABSTRACT

A group of preservice and first year teachers share their experiences as new teachers of Color entering the profession in urban public schools. Specifically, these novice teachers discuss the transition from an urban education teacher preparation program into the classroom and their successes and challenges enacting culturally relevant pedagogy. Findings showcase understanding self, community, and collaboration among critical pedagogues and navigating theory and practice as emergent themes. These new teachers speak to the journey of becoming the teachers they want to become and the challenges they encounter in public K-12 schools. Implications are presented to highlight the power and passion of these new teachers and how we, as critical scholars, must learn from them and work with them as we seek to disrupt the dominant, middle class, white discourse in teacher education programs and educational research.     

Radio Facsimile Newspapers of the 1930s and 40s: Electronic Publishing in the Pre-Digital Era

During the 1930s and 40s, dozens of newspapers and broadcasters experimented with the technology of “radio facsimile.” This form of broadcasting transmitted condensed, tabloid-like newspapers over the airwaves to specially designed facsimile printers. Radio stations operated by newspapers were the most enthusiastic proponents of the technology, though some publishers worried that the emerging medium represented an economic threat. This study examines FCC files on the subject, and outlines the rise and fall of radio-faxpapers as a precursor to later electronic methods for delivering news.     

An Examination of Changes to State Civic Education Requirements, 2004–2016

Across the country, states are considering policies that support civic learning among youth. Recent initiatives at the state level have changed graduation requirements and state assessments around high school civics. These initiatives can be grouped into three types: coursework, assessments, and accountability. The first type, coursework, refers to whether a state’s graduation requirements include a course in civics. The second, assessments, encompasses state requirements that students be assessed on civics or citizenship education. The third type, accountability, refers to whether a state’s accountability system includes state assessments in civics or citizenship education. The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to describe state policies in civics education and the variation in them among the American states, (2) to document the changes in state policies between 2004 and 2016, and (3) to help unpack the reasons behind changes to civics education policy among the American states. We find considerable variation in civics education policies across states, as well as substantial changes within states over time. Using event history analysis, we exploit the variation to examine the extent to which political, economic, and demographic factors inside a state as well as the actions of neighboring or regional states condition adoption of assessment policies. We find evidence that the proportion of Hispanic and black populations in a state are positively associated with adoption and discuss implications and areas for future research.     

When does a nation-level analysis make sense? ESD and educational governance in Brazil,South Africa,and the USA

International policy analysis tends to simplify the nation state, portraying countries as coherent units that can be described by one statistic or placed into one category. As scholars from Brazil, South Africa, and the USA, we find the nation-centric research perspective particularly challenging. In each of our home countries, the effective influence of the national government on education is quite limited, particularly in fringe and emerging areas of education such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Climate Change Education (CCE). This essay explores how nation-level comparisons are and are not useful for international research on ESD and CCE. We consider several layers of decentralized governance, but ultimately come to the conclusion that ESD governance in our respective countries is polycentric rather than decentralized. We discuss the implications of this idea for cross-national policy research on ESD and CCE.     

Towards a world in which many worlds fit?: Zapatista autonomous education as an alternative means of development

This paper examines the Zapatista schools which arose in 1996 in the state of Chiapas in Mexico as a pillar of Zapatista autonomy and also as a result of the indigenous communities’ dissatisfaction with the government's bilingual education programme. Based on ethnographic field work, the author reveals the objectives of the schools as being the protection of indigenous culture, values, languages and rights, the promotion of sexual equality, the gearing of education towards the rural context and the strengthening of communities’ independence of external organisations. The author finds that despite the political, financial and didactic obstacles they face, the schools are succeeding in making progress in fulfilling their objectives and building an alternative to the neoliberal development model.     

Studying and Constructing Concept Maps: a Meta-Analysis

A concept map is a node-link diagram in which each node represents a concept and each link identifies the relationship between the two concepts it connects. We investigated how using concept maps influences learning by synthesizing the results of 142 independent effect sizes (n = 11,814). A random-effects model meta-analysis revealed that learning with concept and knowledge maps produced a moderate, statistically significant effect (g = 0.58, p < 0.001). A moderator analysis revealed that creating concept maps (g = 0.72, p < 0.001) was associated with greater benefit relative to respective comparison conditions than studying concept maps (g = 0.43, p < 0.001). Additional moderator analyses indicated learning with concept maps was superior to other instructional comparison conditions, and was effective across science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and non-STEM knowledge domains. Further moderator analyses, as well as implications for theory and practice, are provided.     

Did She Jump Because She Was the Big Sister or Because the Trampoline Was Safe? Causal Inference and the Development of Social Attribution

Children rely on both evidence and prior knowledge to make physical causal inferences; this study explores whether they make attributions about others' behavior in the same manner. A total of one hundred and fifty‐nine 4‐ and 6‐year‐olds saw 2 dolls interacting with 2 activities, and explained the dolls' actions. In the person condition, each doll acted consistently across activities, but differently from each other. In the situation condition, the two dolls acted differently for each activity, but both performed the same actions. Both age groups provided more “person” explanations (citing features of the doll) in the person condition than in the situation condition. In addition, 6‐year‐olds showed an overall bias toward “person” explanations. As in physical causal inference, social causal inference combines covariational evidence and prior knowledge.     

The Role of Everyday Contexts in Learner‐centred Teaching: The practice in Namibian secondary schools

This paper reports on the use of out‐of‐school everyday contexts in Namibian science classrooms. This use is portrayed against the backdrop of an explicit educational philosophy of learner‐centred teaching. Data were collected through audio‐taped teacher–learner interactions and non‐participant field notes in 29 junior and senior science classes taught by 12 teachers in six schools. An existing typology was applied to classify episodes of use of everyday contexts and identify teachers’ pedagogic strategies for their use. The results show that more everyday contexts are used in junior secondary than in senior secondary classes, that only a limited range of types of everyday contexts are used at both levels, and that their use often follows theoretical exposition or teacher questioning. These findings are related to three interpretations of learner‐centred teaching. Recommendations for a fuller implementation of learner‐centred teaching are made.