Moving Urban Students Beyond Online Public Voices to Digital Participatory Politics

Author(s):  
Nicholas Lawrence ◽  
Joseph O'Brien ◽  
Brian Bechard ◽  
Ed Finney ◽  
Kimberly Gilman

The authors explore a teacher's 10-year journey to foster his urban middle school students' public voice and then their ability to engage in participatory politics. The authors first provide a conceptual and experiential context for how the teacher came to question whether cultivating 8th grade students' online public voice in a U.S. history was enough. Second, they discuss how two teachers created online interschool deliberations about contemporary issues and how a third teacher used low and high tech to enable her students to take civic action. Third, they discuss the essential elements of an online participatory learning space. Fourth, they address the challenges of integrating digital deliberations about contemporary public issues and online civic action into a U.S. history curriculum. Finally, they present how they adapted a site devoted to deliberations about just war in the context of U.S. history to a focus on just action in a contemporary setting.

Author(s):  
Nicholas Lawrence ◽  
Joseph O'Brien ◽  
Brian Bechard ◽  
Ed Finney ◽  
Kimberly Gilman

The authors explore a teacher's 10-year journey to foster his urban middle school students' public voice and then their ability to engage in participatory politics. The authors first provide a conceptual and experiential context for how the teacher came to question whether cultivating 8th grade students' online public voice in a U.S. history was enough. Second, they discuss how two teachers created online interschool deliberations about contemporary issues and how a third teacher used low and high tech to enable her students to take civic action. Third, they discuss the essential elements of an online participatory learning space. Fourth, they address the challenges of integrating digital deliberations about contemporary public issues and online civic action into a U.S. history curriculum. Finally, they present how they adapted a site devoted to deliberations about just war in the context of U.S. history to a focus on just action in a contemporary setting.


2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daryl W. Kinney

Nontransient 6th- and 8th-grade urban middle school students' achievement test scores were examined before (4th grade) and during (6th or 8th grade) enrollment in a performing ensemble. Ensemble participation (band, choir, none) and subject variables of socioeconomic status (SES) and home environment were considered. Fourth- and 6th-grade achievement tests consisted of Reading, Math, Citizenship and Science; 8th grade included Reading, Math, Social Studies, Science, and Language Arts. Analyses indicated significant differences yet small effect sizes for main effects of SES and ensemble participation. Higher SES students scored significantly higher on all subtests except 4th-, 6th-, and 8th-grade reading. Sixth-grade band students scored significantly higher than choir students and nonparticipants on every subtest of 6th- and 4th-grade achievement tests. Eighth-grade band students scored significantly higher than nonparticipants on 4th-grade Reading and Math and every subtest of the 8th-grade achievement test except Social Studies. Similar results for both cohorts suggest that band may attract higher achieving students from the outset and that test score differences remain stable over time.


Author(s):  
Rinaldi Masda Syahputra And Johan Sinulingga

This research analyzed the readability of reading texts taken from English textbooks for grade VIII students of SMP Negeri 1 Kabanjahe of 2016/2017 entitled English in Focus published by Pusat Perbukuan Departemen Pendidikan Nasional. Being important a textbook as the most used in sources of a class, textbook should be readable and appropriate for the students especially for the reading texts inside it. The goal of this research was to find out how is the readability of those reading texts in the textbook.To describe and investigate the readability, this research used a readability formula measurement called SMOG Grading Formula which is found by G. Harry Mc. Laughlin. The source of the data were 20 reading texts taken randomly from English in Focus textbook.The major findings of the study showed that the readability of 20 reading texts were in the variety level for students within 5th elementary school to the 10th grade high school students level, and it found that 13 of 20 reading texts or about 65% of the data are appropriate for the 8th grade students who are the user of the book. Meanwhile, this research also found reading texts which are not appropriate for the students. There are 3 reading texts are too easy and 4 are too difficult for them. So, 35% reading texts in the data is not appropriate for 8th grade students.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ines Testoni ◽  
Lorenza Palazzo ◽  
Lucia Ronconi ◽  
Stefania Donna ◽  
Paolo Francesco Cottone ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The denial of death in Western society deprives young people of the tools to derive meaning from experiences of death and dying. Literature shows that death education may allow them to become familiar with this topic without causing negative effects. This article describes the effects of a death education course with adolescents, wherein participants were given the opportunity to meet palliative doctors and palliative psychologists at school and in a hospice, where they were able to converse with the families of the dying. Methods This study used mixed methods and included an evaluation of a death education intervention with longitudinal follow-up of outcomes. The course involved 87 secondary school students (experimental group) aged between 16 and 20 years. We also recruited a control group of 76 similarly-aged students to observe differences. The variables we examined were: alexithymia, representation of death, value attributed to life and spirituality. These were measured with the following instruments: the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, the Testoni Death Representation Scale, the Personal Meaning Profile and the Spiritual Orientation Inventory, respectively. To better understand how the students perceived the experience, we asked the experimental group to answer some open-ended questions. Their answers were analysed through thematic analysis. Results The study showed that death education and the hospice experience did not produce negative effects, but rather allowed students to decrease alexithymia, improving their ability to recognise and express emotions. Thematic analysis revealed that all participants perceived the experience as very positive. Conclusions Our findings affirm that death education programs can be successfully implemented in high schools, and that they can usefully involve local hospices and palliative care professionals, especially physicians and psychologists.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-61
Author(s):  
Necip Demirci ◽  
Refika Yilmaz ◽  
Ayda Karaca

The aim of the study was to analyze step counts of middle school students in structured and unstructured physical education classes (PE) according to age, gender, and school type. Data were collected on a sample of 74 students, 40 7th and 34 8th grade students recruited from private and public middle schools. Omron HJ-112 pedometers were used in this study to obtain step counts. There were statistically significant differences between boys and girls in the step counts in both structured and unstructured PE. A significant difference was observed between school types in step counts during structured PE in both genders, while no significant difference was found for unstructured PE. Significant difference was found between step counts of only boys of different grades in unstructured PE. Boys made more steps than girls both in structured and unstructured PE. In structured PE, 7th grade boys reached a higher number of steps than 8th grade boys.


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 570-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Voight ◽  
Regina Giraldo-García ◽  
Marybeth Shinn

Residential mobility is associated with negative education outcomes for urban students, but there is little empirical evidence for school factors that may ameliorate these effects. One such factor may be civic engagement at school. This study analyzed data from 2,000 urban middle school students to examine the interplay of residential mobility, education outcomes, and school civic engagement. Findings show that students who change residences have lower academic achievement and rates of attendance and that mobile students who are leaders in school groups and attend afterschool programs have more positive education outcomes compared with their mobile peers who are uninvolved.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 984
Author(s):  
Özlem Eryılmaz Muştu ◽  
Sare Ucer

In the current study, the purpose is to determine the secondary school students’ cognitive structure related to the concept of atom by using the drawing technique. The study was conducted with the participation of 90 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade students in 2016-2017 school year. The students were asked two open-ended questions to illustrate the concept of atom in their minds and to explain where they have learned the information expressed in their drawings about the atom so that the atom models in their minds could be elicited. The students’ responses to these questions were categorized by means of qualitative analysis and frequencies were calculated for them. At the end of the study, it was determined whether the atom models drawn by the students are false or acceptable. It was seen that the students rarely illustrated nucleus and electrons in their drawings and they usually drew spheres. Moreover, the students stated that they learned this information mostly from different textbooks or the Internet. Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file.  ÖzetÇocuklar, etraflarında olan olaylara karşı aşırı meraklıdırlar ve kavramlara kendileri kişisel anlamlar yüklemektedir. Öğrencilerin kavramları anlayabilmeleri için kavramların zihinlerine doğru bir şekilde kodlanması gerekmektedir. Bu çalışmada; ortaokul öğrencilerinin atom kavramı ile ilgili bilişsel yapılarının çizim tekniği ile belirlemesi amaçlanmıştır. 2016-2017 eğitim öğretim yılı bahar döneminde gerçekleştirilen çalışma; 5., 6., 7. ve 8. sınıflarında  öğrenim görmekte olan toplam 90 ortaokul öğrencisiyle gerçekleştirilmiştir. Çalışmada öğrencilerin zihinlerindeki atom modellerini belirlemek amacıyla atom kavramı ile ilgili bir çizim yapmaları ve bu çizdikleri şekle ait bilgiyi nereden öğrendiklerini ifade edebilmeleri için iki adet açık uçlu soru sorulmuştur. Öğrencilerin verdikleri cevaplar nitel analiz yöntemiyle kategorilere ayrılmış ve frekans değerleri elde edilmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda öğrencilerin çizdikleri atom modellerinin yanlış veya kabul edilebilir seviye olduğu belirlenmiştir. Öğrencilerin çizimlerinde nadiren çekirdek ve elektronlara yer verdiği genellikle küre şeklinde çizim yaptıkları görülmektedir. Ayrıca öğrencilerin bu bilgilere genellikle farklı ders kitaplarından veya internetten öğrendiklerini ifade ettikleri tespit edilmiştir.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Sena Görgün ◽  
Canses Tican

The main purpose of the current study is to investigate middle school students’ math self-efficacy perceptions and math problem posing attitudes. The sample of the study is comprised of 990 fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade students attending middle school in the Fethiye district of the city of Muğla. As the data collection tool, the “Math Self-efficacy Perception Scale” and the “Math Problem Posing Attitude Scale” were used. In the analysis of the data collected through the qualitative research method, frequencies, percentages, independent-samples t-test, one-way variance analysis, post-hoc tests (Scheffe and Dunnett’s C) and correlation analysis were used. As a result, it was found that the middle school students’ math self-efficacy perceptions and math problem posing attitudes are over the medium level. The middle school students’ self-efficacy perceptions were found to be varying significantly depending on gender. The middle school students’ problem posing attitudes were found to be varying significantly depending on gender. The math self-efficacy perceptions and math problem posing attitudes of the 5th and 6th grade students were found to be significantly higher than those of the 7th and 8th grade students. A medium, positive and significant correlation was found between the middle school students’ mean math self-efficacy perception score and their mean math problem posing attitude score.


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