Using Fan Fiction to Bridge Students' Understanding of Science

The purpose of this chapter was to present current literature focused on integrating science and literacy and describe the teaching of a science unit of study that incorporated fanfiction literature in a fourth-grade classroom. Ms. Bardon's instructional techniques were focused on integrating science learning with reading and writing based within a fictional text read together as a classroom community throughout the unit of science study. The unit of study was presented alongside background literature to illustrate how such teaching is indicative of a larger movement in the educational field toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-based pedagogy and curriculum. The account of teaching was presented according to the close reading of the fictional text, the hands-on science activities, and the culminating student writing of a fanfiction narrative that constituted the assessment of science learning.

Utilizing Participatory Action Research to Build an Inclusive Classroom Community in France

Inclusive education is increasingly prioritized in legislation and policy across the globe. Historically, the concept of inclusion within educational contexts refers primarily to the placement of students with disabilities in general education classrooms. More recent descriptions of inclusive education focus on ensuring that all children can access and participate in physical, social, and academic aspects of the classroom. However, a growing body of research suggests that students continue to experience exclusion even within educational contexts that express a commitment to inclusion. In France, a growing number of private, independent schools seek to create the inclusive environments that, despite the ministry of education’s initiatives focused on inclusion, the public school system does not yet provide. One such school engaged in a participatory action research project to create an inclusive classroom that responded to the evolving needs and interests of the community, resulting in a sense of belonging for all members. As all classroom community members (students, families, and teachers) participated in the project of creating an inclusive classroom, the elements of participatory action research allowed inclusion to become a flexible, ongoing, and reflexive practice of identifying and responding to contextually specific needs of classroom members. Approaching inclusion as a participatory action research project in the classroom offers a promising approach to moving beyond interpretations of inclusion that fail to actively address pervasive inequalities and their impact on classroom experiences.

Facebook me!: Initial insights in favour of using social networking as a tool for translator training

This paper argues in favour of integrating and using online social networking, more specifically Facebook, within the translation classroom. This has numerous benefits in terms of aptly preparing trainees for the marketplace and also helping to foster a classroom community by encouraging a collaborative learning environment. A descriptive analysis of five undergraduate courses suggests that using online social networking as a teaching strategy has a significant impact: from engaging students through collaborative translation projects, to peer-reviewing assignments, to establishing ‘telepresence’, Facebook allows the trainer to ‘connect’ the classroom.

Classroom Management in DC Public School: Coolidge Senior High School

Teaching a language is a scientific process to give knowledge of language to the students in order that the students enable to communicate through in written and spoken form with one another. The students are able to communicate in spoken and written English accurately, fluently and in good manners. Managing a class full of students is one of the biggest challenges faced by teachers. If teachers do not have an effective plan in place, there will not be much opportunity for students to engage in meaningful learning experiences. Thus, teachers will find themselves refereeing instead of teaching. Classroom management is a term used by teachers to describe the process of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly despite disruptive behavior by students. Classroom management means teachers’ strategies to create and maintain an orderly learning environment and discipline means teachers’ responses to students’ misbehavior. The goal of classroom management is to create and maintain a positive, productive learning environment, to support and foster a safe classroom community, to assist students to keep task focused, to reduce distraction from learning, to organize and facilitate the flow of learning activities and to help the students to manage them. This is part want to analysis the video taken from YouTube; focus on native or first language in English language teaching on senior high school level. The video coming to DC Public School: Coolidge Senior High School.

The impact of team-based learning on students’ perceptions of classroom community

Developing a sense of classroom community is important in promoting course satisfaction and in helping students overcome feelings of disconnectedness, especially in online courses. When considering the various strategies identified as contributing to a sense of classroom community, instructors likely need support in which strategies and technology tools to select, as well as how to implement those strategies. This support may be especially needed for instructors seeking to translate community building practices in face-to-face settings to their online courses. Team-based learning might be used to foster a sense of classroom community among students in both face-to-face and online courses. An embedded mixed methods design was used to determine if and how students’ perceptions of classroom community varied between method of course delivery (face-to-face or online) and course format (non-TBL or TBL). The results showed whether students in face-to-face courses (non-TBL and TBL) reported a stronger sense of classroom community than those students in online courses (non-TBL and TBL). The results also revealed how students in TBL courses (face-to-face and online) described their sense of connectedness to their instructor and peers compared to those in non-TBL courses.

Connections/Communities Impact on Online Learning

Building a sense of community within online learning environments has taken on greater significance during the COVID-19 pandemic, where online learning has become essential given the suspension of in-person classes around the world. Theoretical concepts such as the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework (Garrison et al., 2000) and the Fully Online Learning Community Model (VanOostveen et al, 2016) offer a conceptual basis for understanding the importance of online communities. A method of measuring virtual communities is necessary to track both their development and identify curriculum and instructional practices that foster and maintain their success. Rovai’s Classroom Community Scale (2002) and other measurement tools were found to be critical for measuring student connectedness and learning, and how virtual communities can meet the educational needs of students. Furthermore, analyzing the implications of technology on user perception and sustainability of virtual communities is crucial. Widespread and equitable access to emerging technologies have enhanced multimodal forms of collaboration and interaction. Overall, online communities may prove to be beneficial to online learning, by eliminating the sense of isolation often felt in traditional distance learning classrooms and decreasing the attrition rate of online students as a result. Keywords: community, online learning, technology, measurement, connections

EdD Graduate Perspectives: Uplifting Our Own Voices

The purpose of this essay is to share the voices of EdD graduates who are often underrepresented or missing in the literature. To begin, we invited EdD graduates to co-author this article about the connection among their EdD program experiences and interactions and their activism. We included our definition of activism and posed three open-ended questions. Six program graduates and one professor agreed to organize the graduates’ responses by the question topics and salient themes. We asked about our experiences in the EdD program and how these influence—positively and negatively—what we are doing now (post-program). We found (a) relationships with faculty and cohort mattered; (b) instructional scaffolding was vital; and (c) faculty and cohorts reflected how lived experiences cultivated a sense of belonging and collectiveness. We also asked about our interactions with peers, cohort, advisor(s), instructors, or mentors, as well as, in what ways did these interactions affect—positively and negatively—what we are doing now (post-program). Lastly, we asked, in what ways, did the EdD program affect—positively or negatively—our activism in the classroom, community, or place of employment. We found examples of how we are shifting the landscape of academia to honor more voices in research and publication, more culturally responsive to impacted communities, and challenging the status quo. We focused on our experiences and interactions in an EdD program and how these experiences and interactions prompted activism in our current practice so that having a diversity of voices not only challenge other students, regardless of their background, to think differently about who creates, produces, and defines knowledge, as well as, support faculty that say they want to expand their curriculum and instruction, yet rely on what they know or what was taught to them in their courses.