scholarly journals COLLABORATIVE ACTION RESEARCH TO IMPLEMENT SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING IN A RURAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: HELPING STUDENTS BECOME “LITTLE KIDS WITH BIG WORDS”

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-47
Author(s):  
Donna M. San Antonio

Research has shown that social and emotional learning (SEL) can benefit students in affective, interpersonal, communicative, and academic realms. However, teachers integrating SEL face a variety of logistical, pedagogical, and skill development challenges, including how to effectively facilitate classroom conversations on social justice and personal loss. This article draws from classroom observations, teacher conversations, interactive journals, and field notes to describe a seven-month-long university-school partnership to carry out an action research project in a high-poverty rural elementary school in the US. Teachers grappled with how to address race, immigration, and gender discrimination in a predominantly White community. Classroom vignettes, and teacher and author reflections, illustrate the iterative, developmental, and reciprocal aspects of learning between teachers and students, and between the university-based facilitator and teachers.

Author(s):  
Pauline Millar ◽  
S. Joel Warrican

Burgeoning technologies are changing the global practices of youth to embrace a form of literacy which encompasses both skills and multimodal forms. In Barbados this has been perceived as disengagement from conventional literate practices and has caused concern in the wider Barbadian community. This view is reinforced by the seemingly ubiquitous engagement of youth with various forms of communications technology rather than traditional text. This chapter presents some insight, in the context of a Barbadian secondary school, into an action research project which sought to bridge the existing divide between traditional and semiotic literacies. This investigation confirmed that students were engaged in literate acts in diverse ways. The creation of third space required revised assumptions about the nature of literacy and redefined roles for teachers and students. This chapter concludes with recommendations for increased dialogue, collaboration and professional development among Barbadian secondary English teachers on issues related to literacy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (5) ◽  
pp. 59-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madora Soutter

A mixed-methods study of a large social-emotional learning (SEL) program revealed notable disparities in the ways that teachers and students perceived the program’s impact. Teachers believed the initiative empowered students, while the students themselves described the program as one that emphasized compliance. Madora Soutter summarizes her findings and offers three recommendations for teachers and administrators implementing social and emotional learning initiatives: Evaluate the intention behind SEL programming to avoid a deficit mindset; anticipate implementation roadblocks, such as the tension between some SEL programs and the inherent power dynamics in schools; and actively, authentically listen to students.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-274
Author(s):  
Heather Lotherington

This article uses a comic program to graphically summarize a collaborative action research project that brings together York University researchers and elementary school teachers at Joyce Public School in northwest Toronto to experimentally develop multiliteracies pedagogies in a context of emergent literacy education. The project, which has been continuously developing since 2003, searches for ways of socializing both children and teachers into new literacies in the primary and junior grades from a grassroots perspective that operates within the constraints of the modern political machinery that organizes formal education. The teacher-researchers who work in this community of practice carve out preferred trajectories for new literacies action research through narrative projects, focusing on perspectives such as playing with the myriad junctures between and across alphabetic page and iconic screen; creating dynamic textual representations; including community languages towards globally focused linguistic learning; and creating multiple representations of a narrative thread across language, genre, and culture. We work collaboratively to bridge theory and practice using a blended model that includes regular face-to-face workshops. Now an online workspace, and in its seventh year of consecutive funding, the project is moving into ludic approaches to multimodal literacy education through gaming.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Evans ◽  
Barbara Reed ◽  
Henry Linger ◽  
Simon Goss ◽  
David Holmes ◽  
...  

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the role a recordkeeping informatics approach can play in understanding and addressing these challenges. In 2011, the Wind Tunnel located at the Defence Science Technology Organisation (DTSO)’s Fisherman’s Bend site in Melbourne and managed by the Flight Systems Branch (FSB) celebrated its 70th anniversary. While cause for celebration, it also raised concerns for DSTO aeronautical scientists and engineers as to capacities to effectively and efficiently manage the data legacy of such an important research facility for the next 70 years, given increased technological, organisational and collaboration complexities. Design/methodology/approach – This paper will detail how, through a collaborative action research project, the twin pillars of continuum thinking and recordkeeping metadata and the three facets of organisational culture, business process analysis and archival access, were used to examine the data, information, records and knowledge management challenges in this research data context. It will discuss how this perspective, was presented, engaged with and evolved into a set of strategies for the sustained development of FSB’s data, information and records management infrastructure, along with what is learnt about the approach through the action research process. Findings – The project found that stressing the underlying principles of recordkeeping, applied to information resources of all kinds, resonated with the scientific community of FSB. It identified appropriate strategic, policy and process frameworks to better govern information management activities. Research limitations/implications – The utility of a recordkeeping informatics approach to unpack, explore and develop strategies in technically and organisationally complex recordkeeping environment is demonstrated, along with the kinds of professional collaboration required to tackle research data challenges. Practical implications – In embracing technical and organisational complexity, the project has provided FSB with a strategic framework for the development of their information architecture so that it is both responsive to local needs, and consistent with broader DSTO requirements. Originality/value – This paper further develops recordkeeping informatics as an emerging approach for tackling the recordkeeping challenges of our era in relation to maintaining and sustaining the evidential authenticity, integrity and reliability of big complex research data sets.


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