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Storytelling is one of many instructional strategies used in leadership education with the promise of providing transformative learning through individual and communal meaning-making. In this application manuscript, we offer examples and discussion of how learners identify storytelling in course design and approach, and their perception of its impact in classroom experiences. We present two undergraduate leadership courses at our former respective institutions and reflect on how learner insights about storytelling can inform future course design and delivery. Framing teaching and learning as a relational enterprise, storytelling can facilitate purposeful, inclusive, ethical, and process-oriented learning when used as an instructional strategy. Additionally, our reflection provides leadership educators with a broader view of the responsibilities incurred when using storytelling and offers strategies to build trust and community in classroom spaces.

New educators may feel overwhelmed by the options available for engaging students through classroom participation. However, it may be helpful to recognize that participatory pedagogical systems often have constructivist roots. Adopting a constructivist perspective, our paper considers three meta-practices that encourage student participation: designing activities, leading others, and assessing peers. We explored the consequences of these meta-practices for important student outcomes, including content knowledge, engagement, self-efficacy, sense of community, and self-awareness. We found that different meta-practices were associated with different combinations of outcomes. This discovery demonstrates the benefit of studying meta- practices so as to reveal the nuanced effects that may arise from pedagogical choices. In addition, an understanding of meta-practices can help leadership educators to be more discerning and intentional in their course designs.

Simulation technology has been used as a viable alternative to provide a real life setting in teacher education. Applying mixed-reality classroom simulations to English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher preparation, this qualitative case study aims to examine how pre-service teachers (PSTs) practice culturally and linguistically responsive teaching to work with an English learner (EL) avatar and other avatar students.

Using an embedded single case study, three PSTs’ teaching simulations and interviews were collected and analyzed.

This study found PST participants made meaningful connections between theory and practices of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, particularly by connecting academic concepts to students’ life experiences, promoting cultural diversity, using instructional scaffolding and creating a safe environment. Nevertheless, they needed further improvement in incorporating cultural diversity into content lessons, creating a challenging and supportive classroom and developing interactional scaffolding for ELs’ language development. The findings also show that while PST participants perceived simulation technology as very beneficial, expanding the range of technological affordances could provide PSTs an opportunity to undertake a full range of critical teaching strategies for ELs.

This research contributes to broadening the realm of mixed-reality technology by applying it to ESOL teacher education and has implications for both ESOL teacher educators and simulation technology researchers.

The process of placing students into special education programming often begins with the teacher being able to identify appropriate educational placements (Rizza & Morrison, 2003). It is important that educators know how decisions regarding placement will impact the daily lives of students including their social interactions with peers and the curriculum used to service students. The least restrictive environment (LRE) mandate of the Education of All Handicapped Children's Act of 1975, later reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990 stated that students with disabilities must be educated with non disabled peers to the “maximum extent appropriate,” “and that they may be removed from the general education environment only if they cannot be satisfactorily educated with the use of supplementary aides and services” (Hosp & Reschly, 2003, p. 68). Furthermore, the LRE ensures that students with disabilities must have access to the general curriculum and be taught with their nondisabled peers (Turnbull, 2003). As a result, fully integrated applications of learning strategies designed originally for students with disabilities are implemented, and scores on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have increased, and sanctioned accountability measures for all students have increased (Sailor & Roger, 2005).

This chapter considers teacher learning in inclusive co-teaching contexts, specifically the moral dimensions embedded within it. The chapter draws data from a study focusing on teachers’ perceptions of their learning during co-teaching in inclusive classrooms, and salient moral features embedded in co-teaching situations. Data from joint stimulated recall interviews conducted with three co-teacher pairs illuminate that teachers perceived both possibilities and challenges in key learning situations during co-teaching in inclusive classrooms. In these situations, it is possible for teachers to articulate and extract their guiding beliefs toward salient moral aspects in inclusive teaching in order to extend their understanding and revise their inclusive teaching practices. This chapter suggests that co-teaching is a promising practice for promoting inclusive classroom communities where teachers and students can learn together.

This chapter describes a particular course that was undertaken as part of a partnership between three community institutions: a classroom of college undergraduate learners, residents of a local homeless outreach center, and the members of a neighboring social justice oriented Christian community. The project was an interdisciplinary endeavor, facilitated by the authors who represent the humanities, specifically Religious Studies and Education. The students in the course represented a cross-section of the institution where the authors teach: various majors, both declared and undeclared; students from different enrollment years; various ages; and mixed race and ethnicity. The first part of this chapter addresses a theoretical framework related to community-based learning and service-learning related to the role of such partnerships in higher education with specific focus on a particular course. The second part addresses the significance of the social change model and purposeful student self-reflection within such partnerships as a way to enhance student learning. The final part of the chapter includes an evaluation of the community collaboration with respect to process and student learning.

This study aims to illustrate how one-sixth grade language arts teacher transforms the theory of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) into practice, an effort made visible through classroom discourse.

This classroom discourse inquiry is guided by tools of reconstructive discourse analysis which encourage a complex consideration of communicative efforts with intent to deconstruct them in the process of uncovering how oppressive social power structures are maintained. Additionally, reconstructive discourse analysis drives attention to how the data analyzed can reveal both how discourse marks moments where justice is constructed as well as how unjust structures may be reshaped into those that are more equitable.

In a setting where rapport and trust have been established, intentional teacher-driven classroom discourse influenced the ability of student cultures, namely, their languages, to be sustained in the classroom on their own merits and not merely as a conduit for accessing dominant academic material.

The information presented in this manuscript in the form of analysis of discursive classroom moments provide examples for equity-driven practitioners to engage in similar critically reflective activities with the potential to expose instances of CSPs or to assist in the identification of instances where the taking up of CSPs should sought.

One difficulty in transforming theoretical stances to practical actions stems from oversimplification of CSP and related asset-based pedagogical practices as “just good teaching.” By deconstructing classroom discourse, this study can subsequently reconstruct effective, generative, culturally sustaining approaches to community practice within a classroom learning space.

In contrast to the ‘bell-curve thinking’ which can shape many teachers’ assumptions of student ability (Fendler, L., & Muzaffar, I. (2008). The history of the bell curve: Sorting and the idea of normal. Educational Theory, 58(1), 63–82.; Florian & Black-Hawkins, 2011; Thomas, G., & Loxley, A. (2007). Deconstructing special education and constructing inclusion. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill International.), some researchers have been examining the ways in which teachers can shift their deterministic understandings of student capacities (see, Graham, A. (2014). Embodiment of knowledge and inclusive pedagogy.; Spratt, J., & Florian, L. (2014). Developing and using a framework for gauging the use of inclusive pedagogy by new and experienced teachers. In C. Forlin, T. Loreman (Eds.), Measuring inclusive education (Vol. 3, pp. 263–278). International Perspectives on Inclusive Education. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.). Despite the adverse effects on student self-efficacy and performance (Fraser, S. (1995). The bell curve wars: Race, intelligence, and the future of America. New York, NY: Basic Books.) that can result from teachers’ assumptions about students’ ability, evidence of teachers’ inclusive education practices can be difficult to find (Forlin, C. (2010). Teacher education for inclusion: Changing paradigms and innovative approaches. London: Routledge.; Jones, P. (2013). Bringing insider perspectives into inclusive teacher learning: Potentials and challenges for educational professionals. London: Routledge.). This chapter begins to address the lack of evidence of inclusive educational practices in some Geography classrooms. The chapter begins by providing an overview of literature which outlines how the development and sharing of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) can enhance effective inclusive practices in Geography classrooms. In contrast to many previous considerations of PCK as a teacher-focussed, individual attribute, this chapter presents an argument that the development of communal or distributed PCK in Geography classrooms can not only enhance creative ways for all students to participate in classroom life but also creates a sense of interdependence between teachers and students to create new knowledge, which in turn links to notions of identity development and inclusive practices. Finally, this chapter presents examples of ways in which Geography teachers can enact inclusive pedagogical approaches in both primary and secondary school contexts.

Colleges of education must do more than expose prospective educators to “best” practices for teaching and leading linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse students. Educators need to develop attitudes, knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to become competent in catering to diverse student populations in schools. In this chapter, we seek to extend this conversation using a critical pedagogical lens. We draw specifically on Paulo Freire’s concept of radical love to interrogate our ways of teaching, leading, and opening up spaces for dialogue toward educating pre-service teachers and leaders who are critically conscious. Additionally, we use Paulo Freire’s concept of radical love to explore the similarities and disjunctures in our pedagogy and positionalities as international scholars of color.

Recent scholarship has focused on the schooling experiences of Black boys in early childhood; however research on the experiences and outcomes of Black girls in early childhood remains virtually nonexistent. More research is needed to ensure that every Black girl excels in early childhood education. Through three reflections from Black early educators, written iteratively through a process of reflection, discussion, writing, and revision, this chapter highlights aspects of Black girls' schooling that can promote Black girls' rapidly developing social, emotional, regulatory, and moral capacities. Within each reflection, the educator's advance our understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy by showing how educators can “teach to and through” Black girls’ funds of knowledge. Additionally, the reflections highlight the powerful role schools play in the lives of Black girls, underscoring the need to more deeply investigate teacher's perceptions of Black girls in addition to the positive and the negative policies and practices enacted in classrooms. The chapter concludes with critical and timely recommendations for research, practice, and policy.