Live Performing and Afterschool Groups

This chapter discusses the challenge of launching student-led performing and creative groups without taking a heavy-handed role in their development. The chapter gives strategies for supporting student-led groups so that they attain the continuity of membership enjoyed by traditional school ensembles. Specifically, it considers three models of student-led groups. The first model is the recording club, a loosely knit group of like-minded students doing self-directed recording projects in the studio. Second is a model based on rock bands and open-mic nights, student-organized ensembles, and performance series that are supported by the school but that operate independently of formal classroom structures. The third model is the electronic music group, a novel and successful performing ensemble combining DJs, instrumentalists, vocalists, and emcees. Lebanon High School’s Electronic Music Group is described: its technical onstage setup, its nontraditional performance venues, its repertoire and creative ethos, and the faculty facilitation that makes it sustainable in a school environment.

Advancing Public Education in Pakistan Through a Teacher Exchange Program in the United States

This study examined a multi-year teacher exchange program to understand its possible impact on advancing Pakistan’s public education. A major goal of the study was to analyze how educators in the program viewed, interpreted, and could transform the new knowledge and strategies learned in the program into effective practices in their Pakistani educational settings. Data were gathered from open-ended questionnaires and focus groups discussions with 37 in-service secondary teachers who attended a 6-week professional development program in the United States. Participants indicated that low-class size, technological tools, diversity, teacher-student interactions, social and cultural practices, and classroom structures were some of the major differences between the US and Pakistan’s classrooms. Information on differences, similarities, and culturally acceptable adaptations are shared.

Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) as Alternative Lifeworlds: Transformative Learning in Cyberspace

Direct instruction (PowerPoint presentations, lectures) often imposes hierarchical classroom structures where the teachers are considered experts, imparting knowledge to passive learners. However, the emergence of tools like Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) encourages the creation of democratic learning environments. We hypothesize that these tools lead to higher degrees of civil discourse within the classroom and create transformative learning trajectories for students, allowing them to create shared purpose to incite social change. By comparing reflectivity displayed in weekly students’ blogging assignments in a classroom using an MUVE (Second Life), and one using direct instruction, we sought to gauge the effect MUVEs had on students’ reflectivity with the passage of time. Results indicated that MUVEs facilitated more critical reflection and transformative learning trajectories as compared to direct instruction frameworks.

Translating Research to Practice on Individual and Collective Mathematics and Science Identity Formation: Pedagogical Recommendations for Teachers

Recruiting students to science and mathematics fields continues to be a nationwide issue, resulting in a dearth of individuals to fill present and future science and math careers. Novel interventions, especially in the K-12 space, call for a move from content acquisition to formation of individuals’ identity to foster involve science and math interest and persistence. Identity research has evidenced results, yet greater communication is needed between the research and practitioner communities to realize the potential of cultivating collective STEM identifies in the classroom. In this paper, we bridge these spaces by describing the potential affordances beyond individual identity formation to that of collective (classroom level) identity formation for K-12 teachers to consider for their math and science students, respectively. Specifically exploring how traditional K-12 classroom structures may reinforce stereotypes hindering collective mathematics and science identity formation, whereas reform-oriented classroom structures (that employ legitimate peripheral participation within a community of practice) enable them. Last, to aid practitioners who wish to engage in reform efforts, we recommend pedagogical interventions to promote opportunities for students to collectively co-construct skills specific to mathematics and science communities as a strategy to foster collective mathematics and science identities. Collective identity formation can provide K-12 classroom teachers pedagogical strategies for additional opportunities or enhanced and experiences for students to co-construct and reinforce individual identities in math and science.

Engaging Through Design Thinking: Catalyzing Integration, Iteration, Innovation, and Implementation

In response to the challenges presented by traditional university and classroom structures, this article offers a set of hybrid pedagogical strategies for transdisciplinary, collaborative, community-based learning that responds to a “real-world need” in “real time.” These strategies emerge from “Design Thinking to Meet Real World Needs,” a project-based general education undergraduate course that harnesses best practices from research on design thinking, transdisciplinarity, and sustainability science. Seeking to inspire empathetic listening and creative confidence (Kelley & Kelley, 2013), the course begins in partnership and in place, engaging students in collaborative participatory action. Emphasizing integration, iteration, ideation, and implementation, the course encourages students to innovate in order to address a local wicked problem. This article is particularly relevant for educators and administrators hoping to catalyze innovative co-participatory engagement projects that move beyond traditional university structures and thus engage more directly with the needs of the community.

Multigrade Instruction at Rishi Valley and Neel Bagh

Recent surveys of the education scenario in India’s countryside highlight the fact that within a single classroom student learning levels vary greatly. Multigrade classrooms, i.e. classrooms where student competency levels are identified, and each student is enabled to move at his or her own pace, are the need of the hour. This essay examines multigrade classroom structures pioneered in south India by Gordon F. Pearce at Rishi Valley School and David Horsburgh at Neel Bagh. A no less important purpose of the essay is to show that the culture of multigrade classrooms of Pearce’s and Horsburgh’s design, though very different, promoted a vision of education enunciated by Rishi Valley’s founder, J. Krishnamurti.

Scholars on the sidelines : a phenomenological study of high-achieving elementary students in southwest Missouri

High-achieving students are those who enter the classroom ready and able to learn. They demonstrate their abilities by earning high grades in their coursework and by receiving high scores on standardized tests. The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to articulate the lived experiences of high-achieving elementary students in suburban schools in southwest Missouri. How would high-achieving elementary students, their parents, and their classroom teachers describe the academic experiences of high-achieving elementary students in suburban schools in southwest Missouri? Specific research probes looked at the degree to which these students received differentiated instruction and sought to uncover the classroom experiences and academic structures that best support and most hinder these students? growth. The findings show that students have limited differentiated opportunities. In speaking to parents, students, and teachers, the following classroom structures and academic structures emerged as those that most hinder learning: (a) mixed-ability classrooms, (b) a focus on standardization, (c) teaching to the middle, and (d) personality clashes with teachers. The following classroom structures and experiences emerged from the data as those that support high-achieving students: (a) pursuing their passions in and out of the classroom; (b) supportive teachers; and (c) confronting and conquering academic challenges. Implications from this study could provide researchers, educators, and administrators more insight into the needs of high-achievers and recommendations for supporting these students in the classroom.

Alignment of learning experiences from prekindergarten to kindergarten: Exploring group classifications using cluster analysis

This study explored children’s experiences of instructional alignment from prekindergarten through kindergarten. Using cluster analysis to analyze data from over 1300 children in the 2009 Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, the study found that children have distinct and definable experiences of prekindergarten–kindergarten alignment, with Hispanic/Latino children more likely to attend Head Start programs with poor support for prekindergarten–kindergarten transitions and poor kindergarten classroom structures, and most children experiencing a decline in developmentally appropriate practices between prekindergarten and kindergarten.

Studying Discourse as Social Interaction: The Potential of Social Network Analysis for Discourse Studies

Education researchers have extensively studied classroom discourse as a way to understand classroom structures and learning. This article proposes the use of social network analysis (SNA) as a method for discourse studies in education. SNA enables us to learn about the connections between persons and the patterns of relations within groups. This presents a novel approach to the study of discourse that may more accurately reflect current understandings of discourse as a social phenomenon. This article explains the theoretical links between SNA and the concept of discourse in education and then considers how SNA can be used to examine classroom discourse. A brief overview of promising methods is presented to provide examples of how SNA can be applied to discourse data. This article argues that continued exploration and applications of SNA could yield more complex understandings of the role of discourse in learning opportunities and outcomes.