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The purpose of this chapter is to highlight issues related to the current policy, practice, and research in the area of functional behavioral assessment (FBA) for students with (or at risk for) emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD). Although a substantial research base exists validating the effectiveness of FBA and function-based interventions for students with developmental disabilities, we believe that these same FBA practices are less valid when employed for students with EBD in classroom settings. Following a review of the current research and a discussion of the practical issues that are encountered when implementing FBA in classroom settings serving students with EB, we outline a more responsive FBA model for students with EBD with an emphasis on future policy, research, and practice applications for the field to consider.

In this chapter, we used a research-based case study titled “The Desirable Prince Meeting” to explore how interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives on the child can be used to prompt critical reflection on socially just equity praxis in early childhood education. We argue that using multiple theoretical perspectives to analyze teaching and learning can generate and drive critical reflection on equity praxis more effectively than using a single perspective that presents a single truth about teaching and learning moments.

This chapter is an unpretentious attempt to arouse teachers and educators to convert classrooms into democratic spaces for critical discussion about martial law in the Philippines, a form of military-ruled government during the time of Ferdinand Marcos, the president of the Philippines, who declared it in 1972. Using critical theory, pedagogy, and literacy as tools for engaging teachers in careful and rigorous academic exploration about the topic of martial law, this monograph encourages teachers to view themselves as cultural workers who intend to facilitate meaning-making with students through dialogue, critical deliberation, and courageous civic engagement. In addition, this chapter shares a list of critical pedagogy resources and reflective readings, a socially and culturally situated perspective, and a culturally responsive pedagogy for teachers in their quest for a more committed, caring, joyful, hopeful, and conscientious view of teaching as a human act of generosity and respect for students' identity and autonomy.

Purpose – To provide educators with an overview of issues and strategies important for preparing preservice teachers to plan instruction, engage students, and assess learning in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and cognitive literature that informs differentiated instruction for linguistic diversity. It then offers a case study example of a preservice student teaching seminar where this knowledge was put into practice.

Findings – Content provides detailed information about the design of a preservice seminar that included the role of a nationally piloted performance assessment. It demonstrates how preparing the assessment portfolio provided a vehicle for a structured and useful focus on diversity within the seminar.

Research limitations/implications – The chapter highlights literature that is specifically useful for preservice teachers and their instructors who are seeking to address the specific needs of English Language Learners and the culturally diverse population of students found in U.S. classrooms. This is important to those who seek to expand this attention to diversity within general teacher education practices.

Practical implications – This chapter serves as a resource for all clinical instructors, providing ideas for incorporation into their clinics and classrooms.

Originality/value of paper – Culturally responsive teaching and a specific focus on teaching English Language Arts for linguistically diverse students are infused in clinical teacher education practices rather than as “add-on” practices.

In this chapter, the co-authors contend that the social-emotional dimensions of teaching, learning, diversity, and inclusion are vital to the development of mindful global citizens. Through drawing on both shared and individual experiences within their university context, and tapping into research literature across the fields of education and social neuroscience, they attempt to present a case in support of this claim. The co-authors assert that in order for mindful global citizenship to be cultivated in authentic, optimal ways in university classrooms and co-curricular spaces, teaching and learning must be anchored in relational trust, social-emotional learning/development, and well-being.

Public education in the United States is White, middle class, and urban/suburban normed. However, in the past decade, national population trends show an increase in minority populations, particularly in the southeastern United States. This trend has resulted in a cultural mismatch between teachers who are not trained in strategies that are responsive to the needs of a diverse student population. Novice teachers in a rural school district in eastern North Carolina participated in a study to examine the degree to which they were prepared to successfully interact with their culturally diverse student populations through the lens of culturally relevant classroom management (CRCM), based on their training at either historically White (HWIs) or Black (HBCUs) postsecondary institutions. As part of this larger study, we found that teachers trained at HWIs, although well-intentioned, enter the classroom far less prepared than their HBCU-trained counterparts. However, for both groups of novice teachers, intercultural interactions earlier in their lives seem to have a greater influence than institutional effects on effective, culturally relevant classroom management practices.

This chapter examines our leadership journey as Black female social justice leaders and culturally responsive leaders from the Caribbean Diaspora in Canada. Borrowing from Mullen, Fenwick, and Kealy (2014) and Campbell’s (2008) notion of leadership as a journey, we critically examine what it means to navigate educational leadership contexts. Through our lived experiences as racialized leaders, border crossing spaces and cultures, and with a deep sense and agency to resolve social inequities and injustice we critically gaze at our leadership contexts. This chapter examines ways we, as critical leaders, challenge inequities, issues of power and marginalization, and find transformative actions and purpose by critically reflecting on our leadership journey. This work will add to the educational leadership discourse by positing ways that leaders can develop agency and engage in leadership that is transformative – bringing theory into action.

This chapter provides a conceptual framework for inclusive education for learners with low-incidence disabilities grounded in the argument that increased access and participation in socially valued roles, activities, and settings are both the most fundamental goals of the inclusive education process and also the primary means in which these goals are achieved. By challenging traditional views of learning development as merely the acquisition of skills, the proposed framework largely considers the social contexts in which the development of new skills takes place. Through the presentation of three case illustrations, the authors describe ways in which the framework may be relevant to designing and evaluating programs of inclusive education that are responsive to the needs of diverse communities, including those in a variety of international contexts.

The literature on non-traditional classroom environments claims that the changed emphasis in higher education teaching from the lecturer to students has intensified the global focus on student-centred learning, prompting colleges and universities globally to introspect, re-examine, and re-structure their pedagogical approaches in an attempt to align with national educational policies, and to position themselves favourably with potential students in an increasingly competitive higher education environment. This is an environment that now relies heavily on digital learning technologies, which has provoked scholars such as Heick (2012) to perceive the change to the virtual as one that makes higher education institutions accessible from anywhere – in the cloud, at home, in the workplace, or restaurant. The COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the need for this flexibility. These forces have put universities and colleges under pressure to implement new teaching approaches in non-traditional classroom settings that are appropriate for, and responsive to, the COVID-19 crisis and students in terms of learning and social support. This chapter identified and appraised key teaching approaches. It is evident that there are three key teaching approaches that higher education institutions have adopted for delivering learning in an emergency and in a student-centred fashion. The three approaches, which include the time and place dispersion, transactional distance, and collaborative learning approaches, embrace social support because they are grounded in social constructivism. Academics need to be fully committed to the role of social support giving – that is, emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal support – in order to foster student wellbeing and cognitive development as students learn together but apart in non-traditional classrooms. The hurried manner in which teaching and learning practices in many higher education institutions have been moved to the online format has led academics to violate many key principles of the approaches they have adopted. And this situation is borne out in the case study discussed in Chapter 8 of this volume. A review of current remote teaching and learning practices is required if academics are to embrace the full principles of the approaches that are appropriate for teaching and learning in non-traditional classroom contexts.

In this chapter, we discuss teaching physical education to Black male students in urban schools. We present a brief account of the history and status of physical education and specifically examine school physical education, particularly for Black male students in urban geographical contexts. We also offer strategies to counter the narrative of Black male school failure and present strategies for addressing the needs of urban teachers and Black male students.