Search results

The purpose of this paper is to report on a collaborative project and study implemented by two teacher educators in an elementary education program. To prepare teacher candidates for field experiences and practicum in a diverse (bilingual) urban school, the program uses coursework to impart asset-based pedagogies and practices.

In this mixed-method case study, this paper examined the awareness and perspectives of preservice teachers (n = 26) to cultural and linguistic diversity and relevant teaching and learning practices. In particular, this study gauged their engagement with multicultural children’s literature in a collaborative interclass activity. The data sources included beginning and end of semester survey responses, notes on participant interactions during the mid-semester collaborative interclass activity and participant retrospective reflections about the activity.

This paper found that teacher candidates showed increased awareness and positive shifts in perspectives. This study also ascertaind that, in learning to become culturally (and linguistically) responsive and sustaining teachers, they benefited from collaborative peer work that focused on learning about multicultural children’s literature, analyzing it and planning to integrate it into their classrooms.

Studies show that culturally relevant literature in schools is beneficial; however, teacher candidates often lack knowledge of such literature and how to use it. This need is especially critical and relevant when learning about and implementing culturally relevant and sustaining practices. The collaborative undertaking discussed in this study fills this gap through co-teaching and interclass activity that brings preservice teachers as a cohort to collaboratively learn about, discuss, reflect on and plan lessons as they prepare to work with students from different backgrounds than their own.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, in the fall of 2020, 72.8% of U.S. postsecondary students were enrolled in distance education courses—up from 36.3% in the fall of 2019. While this surge may be explained by a number of factors, one of the most significant factors is the COVID-19-induced pivot to online learning. The rapid and intense expansion in distance education due to COVID-19 offered learners some sense of continuity in their studies, but it also revealed stark inequities in learner resources and access—especially for students of Color and students from lower-income households. Further, as COVID-19 spread, the U.S. roiled in a “twin pandemic” of racial injustice that continued to metastasize—spawning more pain-points such as online environments where racism became unmasked when face-to-face norms were abandoned. These revelations about the shadow side of online learning are particularly concerning in the context of leadership education and its commitment to inclusion, collaboration, and holism. Given this new context for online leadership education, the purpose of this piece is to reflect on how the Journal of Leadership Education has shepherded the journey of online leadership education and what the future of this journey might look like for online leadership educators committed to change. Scaffolded by the Community of Inquiry model, we offer promising practices that address cognitive, social, teaching, and learner presence in the pursuit of culturally relevant/sustaining and equitable online leadership education.

This paper aims to suggest that classroom instructors should reflect and revise their pedagogy to lead a classroom designed to produce future information professionals who will be prepared to serve their communities in a radical way.

The paper reviews the literature related to radical and humanizing pedagogies and then features an auto ethnographic case study which details how the author implemented some of the strategies.

Formal study of pedagogy can improve the library and information science (LIS) teaching and learning process.

Examining pedagogy in a formal way yields concrete suggestions for improving classroom management and content delivery.

Using a radical pedagogy can improve relationships between teachers and learners, and learners will be able to model the classroom strategies in their own professional practice.

The study builds upon current examples of radical practice in the field and examines how such practices can be instilled even earlier in LIS graduate classrooms.

The purpose of this study was to examine technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in 1:1 laptop classrooms. We evaluate how, if at all, teachers in these environments engage culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) with technology to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse learners.

Data for this multiple case study were collected across three middle schools with a 1:1 laptop initiative. Thirteen teachers participated in individual interviews and 77 teachers completed an online survey. Transcribed interviews and the open-ended survey question were analyzed using an inductive, iterative process of coding according to hallmarks of TPACK and CSP.

This study reveals that while technology could be a powerful tool in fostering an equitable classroom environment, fully implementing equitable approaches in 1:1 laptop schools would require educators to develop knowledge and skills to integrate TPACK and CSP in their classroom.

Our study indicates that obstacles to providing equitable education for CLD learners in 1:1 classrooms are not issues of technology access but issues of disparities perpetuated by missed opportunities to fully engage CSP as a means of challenging the status quo. Tackling this in 1:1 environments would require educators to develop knowledge and skills to engage culturally sustaining TPACK in their classroom.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the principles of Black Lives Matter can be used to enact a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in higher education settings, particularly in small colleges that serve significant populations of students who are underrepresented in higher education.

Drawing on examples from college courses in media and society, organizational communication, and interpersonal communication, the case study shows application of the principles of Black Lives Matter in the college classroom at two different institutions in the urban Northeast USA, where the majority of the students are young people of color and/or first-generation college students.

The paper shows how founding principles of Black Lives Matter, particularly diversity, intersectionality, loving engagement, and empathy, can be used to guide concrete pedagogical practices. It provides examples of how to use Black Lives Matter as a framework to enhance and improve college teaching to make it more diverse and inclusive.

This case study is based on the author’s experiences teaching at two majority-minority colleges in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This paper is not the result of a systematic research study.

This paper has significant implications for how to enact CSP in higher education settings. This paper is valuable to those looking for specific strategies to include more diverse and inclusive teaching strategies. This research also shows both the utility and impact of Black Lives Matter when applied to higher education.

This paper improves public understanding of Black Lives Matter as a social movement.

Since the Black Lives Matter movement is fairly new, there is limited academic research on it. Further, there has not been attention to how Black Lives Matter provides insight into pedagogy, particularly in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to make visible the field's propensity to center whiteness even in engaging inclusive practices in information literacy classrooms. This paper offers abolitionist pedagogy as a means to understand and address these concerns.

This paper uses interdisciplinary research methods in the fields of education, library science, feminist studies, Black studies and abolition studies to examine and provide an analysis of current information literacy practices by using abolitionist pedagogy to articulate how it is possible to expand information literacy instruction practices.

Current information literacy practices and methods that seek to create inclusive learning environments for racialized and minoritized learners rely on a set of institutionalized practices such as critical information literacy and culturally sustaining pedagogies. An examination of these practices through an abolitionist pedagogical lens reveals how the field has engaged in reductive and uncritical engagement with these methods despite employing them to create inclusive spaces. Using abolitionist pedagogy as a lens, this critical essay examines the field's foundations in whiteness and illustrates pathways for transformative educational justice.

There has been much work on inclusive teaching practices that discusses challenging information literacy structures' reliance on dominant culture.? To date, there has been little to no scholarship on how information literacy practices could engage in abolitionist pedagogical praxis.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how three young women of color responded with “outlaw emotions” to the novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz in a literature discussion group. This paper considers how readers respond with outlaw emotions and how responses showed emotions as sites of control and resistance. The aim of this paper is to help English language arts (ELA) teachers construct culturally sustaining literature classrooms through an encouragement of outlaw emotions.

To examine how youth responded with emotion to Aristotle and Dante, the author used humanizing and ethnographic research methodologies and conducted a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, journal entries from youth and researcher memos.

Analyses indicated that youth responded with outlaw emotions to Aristotle and Dante, and these responses showed how youth have both resisted and been controlled by structures of power. Youth responses of supposed “positive” or “negative” emotion were sites of control and resistance, particularly within their educational experiences. Youth engaged as a peer group to encourage and validate outlaw emotions and indirectly critiqued emotion as control.

Although many scholars have demonstrated the positive effects of out-of-school book clubs, there is scant research regarding how youth respond to culturally diverse literature with emotion, both outlaw and otherwise. Analyzing our own and characters’ outlaw emotions may help ELA educators and students deconstruct dominant ideologies about power, language and identity. This study, which demonstrates how youth responded with outlaw emotions and gave evidence of emotions as control and resistance, shows how ELA classrooms might encourage outlaw emotions as literary response. These findings suggest that ELA classrooms attempting culturally sustaining pedagogies might center youth emotion in responding to literature to critique power structures across the self, schools and society.

The single-site case study described herein is part of a two-year professional development (PD) initiative aimed at helping teachers from an urban elementary (K-8) school learn how to implement explicit, transactional comprehension strategy instruction across grades using culturally relevant books. This paper aims to describe the urban elementary teachers’ successes and challenges in their first-year implementation of providing culturally relevant literacy instruction.

Three types of qualitative data were collected: researchers’ anecdotal notes during the professional learning sessions; teacher focus groups; and teachers’ blog reflection entries.

The findings revealed that the PD for culturally relevant literacy instruction resulted in teachers’ heightened awareness of how identities and social subjectivities are negotiated in and through culturally relevant discourse, the implicit and explicit bias in the school curriculum. Finally, PD served as a catalyst for facilitating students’ and teachers’ racial and cultural identity development.

The findings of this study suggest that culturally relevant books which incorporate the students’ background may aid in student engagement because students are able to draw upon their culturally acquired background knowledge to better comprehend texts. Thus, to engage, motivate, affirm and promote students’ literacy success, teachers need to possess knowledge of their students’ race and culture, as well as their background, language and life experiences.

The findings of this study suggest that culturally relevant books which incorporate the students’ background may aid in student engagement because students are able to draw upon their culturally acquired background knowledge to better comprehend texts. Thus, to engage, motivate, affirm and promote students’ literacy success, teachers need to possess knowledge of their students’ race and culture, as well as their background, language and life experiences.

Teachers and teacher educators must reflect on, question and critique their own work in preparing teachers to enter today’s schools as critical, reflective educators. The types of children’s literature that are selected and introduced to students play an important role in dismantling technocratic approaches to literacy instruction and strengthen one’s understanding of one another. Teachers must select books that challenge assumptions and speak of possibilities for change.

Culturally relevant pedagogy that includes culturally relevant children’s literature holds promise for improving literacy instructional and assessment practices and school experiences for culturally and linguistically diverse students, especially in environments where high-stakes testing is emphasized. It is one way to imagine a better schooling experience for students that affirms identities and honors and sustains diversity. For culturally relevant pedagogy to be a reality in education, stakeholders must be on board, including students, parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers.

This paper describes how an Ontario school board's majority First Nation, Metís and Inuit (FNMI) student population influenced the direction and priorities of the board toward culturally responsive and well-being focused initiatives. Using culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) as a conceptual framework, it explores the board's efforts to meet the socioemotional and identity needs of its FNMI students (and families) through investments in professional learning communities (PLCs) and targeted programming and technologies.

This paper presents findings from one case in a larger multi-year (2015–2017), multiple-case (10 school boards) study by a university research team that included the author. Thematic analysis was used to code interviews and focus groups conducted with over 40 administrators, educators and community partners in the board featured in this paper.

The board's culturally responsive and well-being focused initiatives, while intended to support FNMI students' socioemotional success and sense of inclusiveness in schools, was inadequate at fostering and sustaining students' (and families') cultural survival and communal well-being.

Findings offer practical ways that schools serving large populations of FNMI students might support students' identity development and self-regulation skills in schools while also serving as a cautionary example of strategies that do not sufficiently address student challenges that are the result of ongoing legacies of colonization.

This study provides a distinctive example of a predominantly FNMI school board that, in recent years, has prioritized student well-being and identity development over achievement. It provides insight into the transformative possibilities and constraints of trying to support FNMI students' socioemotional healing and cultural sustenance in a colonized system.