Equity and Engagement Through Digital Storytelling and Game-Based Learning

This chapter is founded on the idea that literacy is the cornerstone of teaching and learning across disciplines and is the scaffold for quality communication across modes. Therefore, it contends that the ever-widening education and opportunity gaps seen throughout United States school systems have the potential to be bridged through engaging communicative literacy experiences. Information and resources provided are supported through a theoretical framework based on engagement theory, equitable access as a construct, and multiple literacies theory. As educational equity gaps continue to develop and widen for students based on race, income, language, and technology, it is imperative that innovative practices be researched, reviewed, and put into practice. By utilizing digital storytelling and game-based learning, this chapter attempts to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of issues related to classroom practice, educational equity, learning engagement, and literacy opportunities.

Designing Text Message Learning to More Equitably Reach Students Wherever They Go

This chapter describes how TESOL educators can partner with global aid organizations, local communities, and learners themselves to leverage low-tech yet innovative learning solutions like text-message lessons with the goal of more equitably reaching learners, particularly those affected by disruption to their education such as those who are migrants/refugees. Taking such action as advocates committed to closing opportunity gaps arising from social issues affecting language learning not only involves the TESOL educator in the six principles for exemplary teaching of English learners but also UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, trauma-informed teaching and learning, and the concept of text messages used as micro-learning. Through a UNICEF case study of practice in action, the author provides a stepwise how-to for redesigning curriculum into micro-learning appropriate for text-message delivery and offers considerations and recommendations for its dissemination, evaluation, and potential application to many other contexts and learner populations at scale.

Expanding the Conception of Giftedness to Talent Development

To determine if a person is gifted or not, the government sets the criteria of identification since giftedness is an abstract concept. However, the standard has always been decided and affected by the attitudes of the education authority and the allocation of resources. The opportunities for some potential learners to participate in gifted programs are often closed because of high identification criteria on standardized tests, especially intelligence tests. To bridge the achievement and the opportunity gaps between regular and gifted students with disabilities or different cultural backgrounds, educators are encouraged to apply the talent development model to develop hidden potential rather than focus on identification or labeling students as “gifted.” Every child is unique and has strengths and weakness. It is time to change the rigid concept of giftedness and expand the concept to discover multiple talents. The most important aspect is no longer defining intelligence merely as g or IQ.

More than a babysitter: Looking back on an effective summer enrichment program

Each summer families across the globe send their children to summer camps and daycares for what amounts to babysitting. This study takes the discussion beyond babysitting and explores a unique summer enrichment program offered to rising second through fifth grade students in a modified enrichment camp model. During the four-week program, students were engaged in standards-based academic instruction in reading, mathematics, and science designed to provide enrichment activities to better prepare them for academic success in the upcoming year. Students were pre-tested over standards from the first quarter of the upcoming year. Then, they were taught the standards and post-tested. Analysis of the pretest and posttest data suggests that the program was successful in increasing students’ content knowledge in each of the subject areas taught. The findings imply that summer programs intentionally offering standards-based academics in an enrichment camp environment can be used to provide learning opportunities that diminish academic opportunity gaps.

Principal Perceptions of the Distance Learning Transition During the Pandemic

Drawing on data from the RAND American School Leader Panel 2020 COVID-19 Distance Learning Surveys, we analyze principal perceptions of school preparedness for distance learning with a specific focus on how different school types (e.g., rural, urban, and suburban) and student groups (e.g., students with mild disabilities, English learner students) were impacted by rapid school closure. These findings have important implications for how state education agencies, policymakers, and districts plan to address the growth of opportunity gaps among student groups. In addition, findings have important implications for education leadership and policy researchers seeking to design and implement studies to inform next generation policy and practice.

Women’s Safety Concerns and Academia: How Safety Concerns Can Create Opportunity Gaps

The present work documents the safety concerns of men and women in academia and how these concerns can create opportunity gaps. Across five samples including undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty ( N = 1,812), women reported greater concerns about their safety than did men, and these concerns were associated with reduced work hours in libraries, offices, and/or labs afterhours. Additionally, although we were unable to manipulate safety concerns among women, in an experiment with men ( N = 117), increasing safety concerns decreased willingness to use the library afterhours. Finally, in an archival study of swipe access data ( N = 350,364 swipes), a crime event that made safety concerns salient for women was associated with a decreased likelihood that women worked in their office afterhours and a decreased likelihood that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics women worked in their labs later at night. Collectively, these data suggest that women’s safety concerns can restrict their work.

Australian Gifted and Talented Education: An Analysis of Government Policies

Education policy signals the level of support or importance for high-performing or gifted and talented students to school leaders, educators, parents, and other stakeholders. These policies communicate the value or goals of departments of education. Given the importance of education policy, there remains a void in the analysis of gifted and talented education policy, which accounts for less than 1% of the empirical literature. We sought to understand how publicly available individual state and territory departments of education’s gifted and talented education policies and guidance documents coalesce with the NAGC (2019) Pre-K–Grade 12 Gifted Education Programming Standards. Although not developed for the Australian context, they provide a common index from which to gauge alignment. Results indicated an uneven approach in both policy and guidance and this imbalance exposes opportunity gaps to address the specific learning needs of this student population.

POVERTY ALLEVIATION THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES: A FRAMEWORK FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE

The traditional macroeconomic approach to poverty alleviation in neighborhoods and communities is to use housing development and job-creation programs to address the income and the opportunity gaps. Entrepreneurship is a much less used poverty alleviation strategy that, in our estimation, can have a significant effect in favorable policy environments. After a brief literature review, we highlight policy approaches that use entrepreneurship as a poverty alleviation strategy. We present several case studies from the United States as evidence of how public policy can empower an entrepreneurial ecosystem to support the self-employed and other low-income entrepreneurs. We conclude with a framework for how public policy can alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship that is generalizable in other contexts.

Masking Attendance: How Education Policy Distracts from the Wicked Problem(s) of Chronic Absenteeism

Traditionally, education policy focuses on reforms that address class size, teaching and learning within classrooms, school choice, and changes in leadership as ways to improve students’ educational outcomes. Although well intentioned, education policy can distract from the multi-layered causes that impact achievement and opportunity gaps, and how students’ life circumstances can affect their school attendance. Students who miss school frequently are less likely to be impacted by even the most robust and comprehensive education reforms. This paper discusses how the root causes of chronic absenteeism are complex and that policy distractions can stifle solutions to solve school attendance issues. As a wicked problem, chronic absenteeism, requires a conceptual framework that helps to organize policy responses within all levels of the educational system, as well as expansive to include other social sectors within public policy.