Search results

Purpose – Studies suggest that children's experiences during first grade help establish educational trajectories that eventually shape their life chances. Research also indicates that student attentiveness in the classroom is integral to learning and later academic achievement, with low-income students of color running a greater risk of “attentional difficulties.”

Methodology – Joining these two bodies of work, I map the social conditions that shape attentiveness in the first-grade classrooms of “at-risk” students. Using ethnographic data collected over three school years, I examine how children actively construct attentiveness during their everyday interactions at school.

Findings – First graders sustain attention but often onto their own auto-involvements and mutual engagements, focal concerns teachers consider “distractions.” By learning the moment-by-moment variations of what to pay attention to and how “attentiveness” looks, children navigate the social ropes of schooling. Young students apply these lessons to self and peers, regulating attentiveness and socializing one another to the norms of their classroom. They are also resourceful actors who skillfully use their understandings of attentiveness to maneuver around the strict order of the day. Schoolchildren multitask, conceal other focal concerns, and give the impression of attentiveness, all of which influence what behaviors get detected as “(in)attentive.”

Online learning can present challenges and barriers for students, especially when it comes to self-motivation and discipline. Non-traditional learners and those who may be underprepared are often the students most likely to seek virtual learning options. As a result, methods of supporting online learners must be intentional and robust to stay attentive to students’ needs. The American Women’s College (TAWC) at Bay Path University designed its Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL) model to promote degree completion through a constellation of evidence-based practices that cultivate student engagement in a personalized online learning environment. SOUL employs an innovative adaptive technology approach with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to promote accessibility and affordability. Foundational to these frameworks is a commitment to leveraging technology to gather data that drives action-oriented analytics, triggering interventions by faculty and staff and generating predictive models to inform wrap-around support. SOUL’s high-tech, high-touch attributes give students agency over their unique learning paths and provide instructors and administrators the meaningful insights needed to target efforts in a personalized yet scalable way, to promote and positively impact student success. Lessons learned in the process of developing data-driven “high-tech, high-touch” practices are presented.

Volume 14 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSCY) is comprised of empirical research and theoretical papers within three areas, namely children's well-being, children and youth peer cultures, and the rights of children and youth. In this volume, the term “children” is used inclusively to encompass those from infancy through the transition to adulthood. These empirical studies include children's voices and experiences from four continents and a range of methodological and theoretical orientations. Additionally, a clear connection to social policy is made in many of these studies. Altogether, these studies highlight how structure and culture both limit and enable the life chances of children, how children interpret and construct their social relations and environments, and finally, how children view themselves as well as how others view the rights of children.

In the light of the core pedagogical ideas, theoretical framework and methodology of the MaCE project, this chapter will discuss implications and options for working with young people in higher education. A core finding in MaCE points to the fact that the participatory approach is very fruitful for working with young people, in order to enhance their feeling of belonging and commitment in the educational system. From educational research, we know that the dropout rate is high in the students' first year of higher education. Therefore, we consider it important to build a solid foundation of trust and well-defined expectations among students and teachers, starting the very day they pass the doorstep of higher education. When applying such inclusive strategies, it becomes possible to collaborate with students as co-researchers in a socio-cultural learning environment. From the MaCE research, we learned that students thrive when academic hierarchies are toned down, making mutual reflections and partaking in discussion accessible for all students. A participatory pedagogy that involves students and builds relations empowers students' sense of meaning and belonging, making them more engaged and thus help decrease dropout rates in higher education. This points to the importance of strong relations and sufficient time for counselling and tutoring.

This chapter examines the practical and conceptual limitations and possibilities of using ethnographic methods in the college writing classroom for the purpose of instructors’ professional development. The study is based on ethnographic research with a second-year course in Stanford University’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric. The study’s dual foci included the teacher–researcher’s pedagogical practices and students’ learning, and entailed participant-observation and the recording of ethnographic fieldnotes. It builds on the anthropology of literacy, a tradition of action research among educational ethnographers, and scholarship on composition pedagogy. Participant-observation could be helpful to other college instructors interested in improving their teaching. However, combining participant-observation with direct student feedback through interviews or surveys will be most effective in shaping educators’ professional development. Using participant-observation for professional development in the college writing classroom did not only situate me, the ethnographer, as both subject and object of research. Unexpectedly, my research also placed ethnographic methods as objects of research. By examining student learning and teaching practices ethnographically, researchers create opportunities to illuminate assumptions related to research as well as broader lessons about the study of teaching and learning.

How was I going to engage the students in my ancient Roman Art and Architecture course, especially the five football players who had signed up in the fall of 2015? In this chapter, I will discuss the commitment I made to the students and myself to ensure that each class period was one in which an active learning technique was used, often paired with some lecture, and sometimes not, to engage students and help them learn about Roman Art and Architecture. I will discuss what assignments I chose based on research and my own observation, as well as the results of a focus group held with the football players a year later about what they remembered. Football players tend to be kinetic learners and thus were chosen as the follow-up to see how the active learning techniques in this class met objectives. Specifically, this chapter will discuss the inclusion of a Reacting to the Past role-playing game, a research project on “Daily Life in Ancient Rome,” and presentations on different methodologies of interpreting an image from a Pompeiian tavern.

This chapter considers the work of preparing educators to teach in culturally sustaining/revitalizing ways. It is based on a qualitative study that examined 60 preservice interns’ cross-cultural experiences in schools in Alaska Native villages. The chapter explores the interns’ descriptions of the schooling contexts related to school-based instruction of Indigenous languages and cultures and considers pedagogical implications for preservice programs that aim to prepare culturally sustaining/revitalizing educators. Findings include accounts of instructional practices in classrooms teaching Indigenous languages and cultures and themes presenting the schooling contexts as crisis, struggle, and hope. Implications for teacher education are discussed consisting of pedagogical responses to the contexts interns described and considerations for supporting preservice teachers’ transformative learning.

This chapter presents an analysis of data gathered from Israeli primary and secondary schoolteachers that tested the degree of market orientation in the Israeli State Education System, the largest system in Israel that is based on grade configuration of primary education (1–6) and secondary education (7–12). It was found that the Israeli teachers are more positive about student orientation (SO) than about competitor orientation and interfunctional coordination, i.e., they are more likely to be positive toward the elements of SO that are emotion embedded and represent teachers’ concern toward and relations with their students. They can identify with elements of SO that represent teachers’ strong emotional commitment toward students, which in turn leads them to change their teaching methods, be attentive and responsive to parents’ interest in the learning of the child, and improve their own teaching. In doing so, the teachers are engaged unconsciously with relationship marketing that might promote their school's market share and image.

The past decade has witnessed a growing appreciation of the role of emotions in cognition, motivation, decision-making and many other areas of research in psychology and education. This chapter draws upon the contents of the book as well as other sources to consider three questions: What emotions do teachers experience in schools and what shapes those emotions? How do emotions and relationships affect life in classrooms? What should be done to incorporate this knowledge into teacher education? Given the powerful role that emotions and relationships play in teaching and learning, it is critical for teacher education in both preservice and inservice settings to support the development of knowledge and skills for emotional self-regulation and the nurturing of relationships in classrooms.