Multigenerational Art Making at a Community School: A Case Study of Transformative Parent Engagement

In this article, Kevin M. Kane, Karen Hunter Quartz, and Lindsey T. Kunisaki describe the transformative parent engagement fostered in a multigenerational afterschool arts program at a community school. Community schools bring together families, teachers, and other neighborhood partners to help students learn, grow, and thrive and often integrate health, education, and social services. This embedded case study shows how community schools can also nurture cultural assets in the form of parents’ community cultural wealth. The learning of these community school parents demonstrates the mutually reinforcing relationships between transformative parent engagement, collaborative leadership, expanded learning opportunities, and integrated student supports. This study highlights the transformative impact of culturally sustaining arts on individuals, families, and the school as a whole, offering implications for researchers and practitioners in community-based arts education and community school development.

A Call for Person-Centered and City-Centered Student Supports

The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is devastating the well-being of college students and society. This article examines the need for attention to collegiate mental health during public health emergencies, with a particular focus on college students in urban settings. The article begins with a brief description of the unique challenges faced by cities during pandemics and continues with a historical overview of pandemics. College students attending three public colleges (n = 719) were surveyed regarding the impact of COVID-19 on their psychological health. Preliminary findings reveal a prevalence of students (44.9%) reporting moderate or severe traumatic stress symptoms in response to COVID-19 stressors. A definition of what we define as “astonishing” is the high trending prevalence of college students reporting that they know someone who died due to COVID-19 (70.6%). The article concludes with recommendations for future research and offers person-centered approaches for social workers and leadership in higher education.

Empowering Early Childhood Teachers for Program Completion Through the Integration of Technology

Political and social pressures, influenced by research on the importance of early learning experiences, are putting pressure on the early childhood workforce to go back to school to complete required certification or degrees. Online programs are effective solutions when they include a multi-layered system of supports. This chapter showcases how one university has built and maintained an early childhood program that allows fully online and face-to-face delivery options for completing bachelor's degrees or certification. Lessons learned will help other early childhood teacher education programs know how to (1) build the technological infrastructure behind successful online programs to ensure student persistence and completion; (2) provide instructor and course supports for successful online course completion, including field-based courses and student teaching; and (3) incorporate student supports that enable early childhood teachers to utilize technology successfully to complete their program. Adjustments and technological supports during the COVID-19 pandemic will also be addressed.

Early Warning Indicator Systems in Action: Considerations from Identification to Supports

Background/Context School transitions pose a variety of social-emotional and academic challenges to students, especially those who are more vulnerable due to home, health, or academic challenges. With this awareness, a growing number of school districts have developed and implemented early warning indicator systems (EWISs) aimed at early identification of and support to vulnerable students. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study While a growing body of research has documented EWISs use objective criteria to identify vulnerable students, there is scant scholarship about student identification using subjective tools, the processes that facilitate information sharing and collaboration between sending and receiving schools, and effective student supports. Our study aimed to narrow the gaps in the literature by providing insight about EWI identification, between-school communication, and student supports through the case study of one school district that implemented both objective and subjective EWISs. Our research questions were as follows: (1) Which students have been identified through the district's objective and subjective EWISs?; (2) How have school staff shared information stemming from the EWISs?; and (3) What supports do school staff offer students identified by the objective compared to the subjective EWISs? Research Design We used a mixed-methods approach, including statistical analysis of student-level administrative records, interviews with district staff, a survey of school staff, and multiple interviews with site staff at a sampling of schools. Conclusions/Recommendations: Identification Our study found that subjective criteria may be more effective in identifying students who are more likely to be missed by automated identification systems, such as “internalizers.” Moreover, stakeholder perception of specific indicators may have an impact on the selection of indicators in use. Sharing of information The practices that schools use to share information about transitioning students is an area ripe for future research. Our study revealed the importance of designing information-sharing mechanisms with the end user in mind. Developing a standardized rubric and incorporating a scale measure for relative urgency could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. We also identified a tension between the need to share information and the will to protect students’ privacy. We see value in localized efforts to mitigate the unintended effects of such tension. Supports A primary consideration in an EWIS is its alignment to the district's model for the distribution of resources to support students. EWIS design considerations We identified the existence of tradeoffs between site-level autonomy and system-level coherence in the design of EWISs.

Can introductory financial accounting grades predict student choice to major in accounting?

PurposeSocial cognitive career theory (“SCCT”) suggests that positive feedback can influence educational choices. Introductory courses often provide students with their first opportunity to obtain feedback in a given discipline. As a result, SCCT hypothesizes that introductory courses grades will impact a student's decision to major in a given discipline. The purpose of this paper is to explore this hypothesis in the accounting domain.Design/methodology/approachLongitudinal data were collected from four cohorts of students registered at a Canadian university. The main hypothesis is tested by estimating a logistic regression.FindingsA significant positive relationship is found between a student's introductory financial accounting (“IFA”) course grade and their decision to major in accounting. This decision to major in the discipline is not found to be affected by various student (e.g. biological sex or age) or instructor (e.g. whether the instructor holds a CPA designation or not) characteristics.Practical implicationsThis study supports seminal and enduring research that emphasizes the IFA course as a gateway into the accounting major. As a result, educators should consider these findings when designing their IFA courses and the related student supports embedded within the IFA course.Originality/valuePrior literature offers conflicting results on the relationship between IFA grades and student's choice to major in accounting. This study relies upon a theoretical framework, SCCT, to settle the debate. This study further extends the prior literature by exploring the impact of various student and instructor characteristics on the relationship between IFA grades and student's choice to major in accounting.

Collegiate Recovery Programs: Helping College Students in Recovery Succeed

College recovery services are designed to provide necessary supports for college students with issues related to substance use disorders to be successful in postsecondary education. However, as a still emerging form of student supports, major issues remain such as funding, the utilization of evidence-based interventions, effective program evaluations, and the need for more empirical research. This article provides a historical overview of Collegiate Recovery Programs (CRPs) and an examination of current issues facing the field; it concludes with recommendations for program administrators, researchers, and rehabilitation counselors.