Teachers College Record
Latest Publications


TOTAL DOCUMENTS

2160
(FIVE YEARS 390)

H-INDEX

62
(FIVE YEARS 3)

Published By Crossref Test User

1467-9620, 0161-4681

2021 ◽  
pp. 016146812110519
Author(s):  
Bic Ngo ◽  
Diana Chandara

Background/Context: Community-based youth theater programs afford youth opportunities to explore and “author” new identities by “performing writing.” Yet, we know much less about the ways in which immigrant youth are exploring struggles and changes within their families and ethnic community. We particularly lack research about the roles of immigrant adult educators in youth programs, and the significance to the pedagogical process of their experiences, being, and modes of interacting with young people who share with them a common ethnicity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The purpose of the study is to explore the role of a community-based Hmong immigrant educator as a “nepantlera,” or boundary-crossing “guide” in Hmong youth’s negotiation of culture and identity. It is guided by three questions: (1) How does nepantlera pedagogy move beyond self–other dichotomies? (2) How does nepantlera pedagogy facilitate rewriting the self to construct new visions of ethnic identity? and (3) How does nepantlera pedagogy entail risking the personal? Setting: The research setting was a Hmong community-based arts organization in an urban center in the Midwestern United States. Population/Participants/Subjects: Three 1.5-generation Hmong American adult staff of a community-based organization, one Korean American teaching artist from a local theater company, and 11 second-generation Hmong American adolescents participated in the study. Research Design: The study draws from a critical ethnographic investigation of the culturally relevant practices of a youth theater project within a Hmong coethnic organization. Data Collection and Analysis: Ethnographic data collection occurred over the 4-month program cycle of the theater project. Data sources include field notes from participant observations, semi-structured interviews, audio and video recordings of the activities, work products, and documents about the program and organization. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis techniques. Findings/Results: The findings suggest that the nepantlera pedagogy of the Hmong immigrant educator fostered opportunities for Hmong youth to (1) disrupt binaries between first-generation and second-generation immigrants by exploring not only differences but also commonalities; (2) imagine new ethnic selves by exploring and rewriting a Hmong edict against same-last-name relationships; and (3) experience the vulnerability of their Hmong educator through disclosure about his personal life. Conclusions/Recommendations: The nepantlera pedagogy of an immigrant educator within a coethnic community-based organization brings a perspective from the nepantla, or “in-between,” of culture and identity that provides immigrant youth with a deeper level of cultural knowledge and connectedness to navigate their multiple worlds.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 28-56
Author(s):  
Andrew Brantlinger

Background: By attracting high-achieving college graduates and professional career changers, selective alternative certification programs, such as the New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF), promise to address pressing teacher shortages while also improving outcomes in hard-to-staff schools. Purpose: Looking at the main patterns in their careers before, during, and after completing NYCTF, the study provides insights into the short- and long-term impacts of mathematics teachers who entered as first- and second-career teachers on NYC public schools and the people in them. Participants: The study tracked the career trajectories and decision-making of more than 600 NYCTF mathematics teachers over a 9-year period. Research design: The longitudinal analysis of the teachers’ career trajectories is illuminated by descriptive statistics and qualitative analyses of their responses to open-ended survey items. Results: The article provides a portrait of urban mathematics teachers’ career decision-making as it unfolds over time. It challenges conventional understandings by demonstrating the stochastic nature of teachers’ career decision-making and, as part of this, consequential amounts of involuntary and midyear turnover. It further shows that, although in many ways similar, the career trajectories of the career changers and recent college graduates differed in key regards. Recommendations: On their own, strategies designed to attract high-achieving recent graduates and professional career changers to teach core subjects like mathematics will not solve long-standing teacher turnover and shortage issues in in high-needs urban schools. Districts also should focus on retention strategies, including training and induction tailored to meet the different needs and career goals of first- and second-career teachers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 171-198
Author(s):  
Matt Garcia

Background: Early studies of district-level outcomes of interdistrict school choice policies found changes in how districts interact with one another and changes in districts’ per-pupil expenditures. More recent studies suggest that wider social and political consequences may result from interdistrict choice policies. Purpose: In Colorado, interdistrict school choice participation increased from 4.64% participation in the 2003–2004 fiscal year to almost 10% participation in the 2016–2017 fiscal year, shifting more than $7.79 billion in per-pupil revenue in the process. This suggests a corresponding shift in the social organization of schooling under Colorado’s statewide interdistrict school choice policy. Research Design: Quantitative studies on school choice policies typically examine the factors leading to individual choices when choosing schools or the individual outcomes of those choices. This study takes a different approach to quantitative analysis of school choice by employing separable temporal exponential random graph modeling (STERGM), a network analysis method, to examine patterns of student-enrollment ties that are created between school districts when students enroll outside their district of residence. Conclusions/Recommendations: School district leaders and policy makers should be cognizant of changes to the organization of education and the fiscal impact of those changes—especially given that findings from this study suggest that these changes may be out of their hands. Findings may have indirect impacts on matters such as mill levy and bond evaluations by way of total program formula calculations and may suggest a hidden destabilization of democratic processes, such as losing the interest of voters who send their students to a school in another district.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 144-170
Author(s):  
Blanca Elizabeth Vega

An organizational conflict lens offers a distinct understanding of how higher education administrators and postsecondary students experience racial conflict on their campuses. Despite students of color historically reporting incidents with overt and subtle forms of racism on college campuses (George Mwangi et al., 2018; Hurtado & Ruiz, 2015; Nguyen et al., 2018; Serrano, 2020), postsecondary leaders continue to report positive race relations on campus (Jaschik & Lederman, 2017). This conflict in perception is the focus of this article. To understand how race-related conflicts are perceived in higher education, I examined perceptions of racial conflict across two types of postsecondary campuses. I used compositional diversity, or a numerical illustration of various racial and ethnic groups (Hurtado et al., 1998; Milem et al., 2005), as a determinant to decide which campuses to study for how racial conflict is understood by administrators, faculty, and students. Drawing from organizational conflict theory, this year-long qualitative study involved 35 open-ended interviews conducted at a minority serving institution (MSI) and a historically White institution (HWI). The main research question was: How does compositional diversity shape stakeholders’ perceptions of racial conflict? Across both campuses, and despite differences in compositional diversity, administrators responded similarly: they noted minimal problems among students regarding racism on their campuses. Alternately, students across both campuses responded similarly: they noted these issues as well but described it in terms of frequency and severity. To make sense of this, I describe findings in three ways: interpersonal and structural racism, intergroup conflict, and historical perspectives about racial conflict. Background/Context: Despite students of color historically reporting incidents with overt and subtle forms of racial conflict on college campuses, postsecondary leaders continue to report positive race relations on campus. Unfortunately, various forms of conflict are often reduced to isolated incidents that are disconnected from aspects of campus culture and climate. Although conflict is a permanent and indelible aspect of organizations, racism and other forms of race-related conflict on college campuses continue to be studied on an interpersonal level, less so at the organizational level of higher education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: An organizational conflict lens offers a distinct understanding of how higher education administrators and postsecondary students experience racial conflict on their campuses. Despite students of color historically reporting incidents with overt and subtle forms of racism on college campuses, postsecondary leaders continue to report positive race relations on campus. This conflict in perception is the focus of this article. To understand how race-related conflicts are perceived in higher education, I examined perceptions of racial conflict across two types of postsecondary campuses. I used compositional diversity, or a numerical illustration of various racial and ethnic groups, a determinant to decide which campuses to study for how racial conflict is understood by administrators, faculty, and students. The main research question I asked was: How does compositional diversity shape stakeholders’ perceptions of racial conflict? Research Design: To understand perceptions of racial conflict, I conducted a multiple case study of two types of institutions in the northeastern United States: a historically white institution (HWI) and a minority-serving institution (MSI). I purposely selected two racially distinct institutions to explore compositional diversity in higher education. I first asked: How does compositional diversity shape stakeholders’ perceptions of racial conflict? Drawing from organizational conflict theory, this year-long qualitative study involved 35 open-ended interviews conducted at a MSI and an HWI. Specifically, I sought respondents who were positioned informants. This approach assumes that informants’ positions inform their behaviors. Conclusions/Recommendations: Although the data here cannot be applied to all institutions, some lessons can be extracted for further exploration, should administrators and researchers desire to understand race-based organizational conflicts. Indeed, across both campuses and despite differences in compositional diversity, administrators responded similarly: they noted minimal problems among students regarding racism on their campuses. Alternately, students across both campuses responded similarly: they noted these issues as well but described it in terms of frequency and severity. To make sense of this, I describe findings in three ways: interpersonal and structural racism, intergroup conflict, and historical perspectives about racial conflict.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 57-86
Author(s):  
Craig De Voto ◽  
Jessica J. Gottlieb

Background/Context: In the United States, strengthening the professionalization of teaching and teacher education has received extensive attention. Notably, the educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) has gained traction. Developed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, & Equity (SCALE) in 2009, edTPA requires teacher candidates to videotape their teaching and reflect via three different tasks: planning, instructing, and assessing. More than one third (900+) of all teacher preparation programs (TPPs) across 41 states are now using edTPA, making it the most widely used licensure assessment in the field. Objective: In this study, we examine differences in how stakeholders (i.e., administrators, faculty, and staff) within and across TPPs are making sense of edTPA. We then examine why such differences in edTPA sensemaking have transpired, including varying policy designs, organizational contexts, and individual attitudes/values. Finally, we illustrate how these differences reflect a deeper historical dilemma in teacher education between those supporting professionalism (i.e., program-specific attitudes/beliefs) and those supporting the professionalization of teaching (i.e., structural or systemic characteristics across programs). Participants: Through purposive and snowball sampling, we interviewed 69 stakeholders across eight TPPs in two states, Illinois and Iowa. These stakeholders were interviewed between 2015 and 2018, approximately 1 year after their TPP adopted edTPA (via mandate or voluntarily). Research Design: We employed a multiple embedded case study design. The first set of cases were the two states selected (Illinois and Iowa) because their policy designs differed (mandated vs. voluntary). The second set of cases were the eight TPPs selected. One-hour interviews were conducted with each of the 69 stakeholders across these case TPPs. Using a sensemaking conceptual framework, instrumental case analysis was then used to examine how stakeholders made sense of edTPA and why. Findings/Results: We found diverse perspectives across our case TPPs as to how stakeholders viewed and implemented edTPA—as either a professionalization or a deprofessionalization tool. Those espousing a view of professionalization supported the assessment as a means to strengthen the profession’s perceived legitimacy and quality, whereas those espousing a view of deprofessionalization believed that it is detrimental in these regards. We argue that this divergence reflects enduring disagreement concerning the mechanisms that define “good” teaching and how best to measure it. Conclusions: We found that structural changes, such as edTPA adoption, may move a field toward being more or less professionalized, but those changes do not guarantee alignment or agreement among the professionals within that workforce. Improving this dilemma within teacher education therefore begins with coming to some reasonable consensus on how best to balance professionalization and professionalism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 112-143
Author(s):  
Derrick R. Brooms ◽  
Keisha M. Wint

Background/Context: Black boys’ schooling experiences in the United States are an important area of inquiry, given the ways they are systematically repositioned away from schooling success in dominant narratives about their lives. Scholars suggest that Black boys need to be cared for and nurtured in schools. However, few studies have explicitly explored their subjective experience of care. A cumulative understanding of the educational trajectories of Black boys suggests that their early experiences can influence later schooling years. This exploration considers the role of relationships and contexts across two distinct time periods of development in shaping their educational experiences. Purpose/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this study, we use a relational care framework to investigate how Black boys, during preschool and high school, make sense of their experiences of care within the school context. Based on their relationships with teachers, other adults, and peers, care is discussed through three important constructs: tangible care, time-related care, and personal support. The major questions we explore are: (1) In what ways do Black boys feel cared for in school? and (2) How does being cared for matter in their schooling experiences? Participants: This study comprises two groups of Black boys at different developmental stages. The first group comprised 11 Black boys enrolled in the same state-funded preschool program, and the second group of participants consisted of 20 Black boys who graduated from the same all-male, all-Black secondary school. Research Design: This qualitative investigation explored how Black boys (N = 31) make meanings of their school-based relationships. It was conducted across two distinct time periods within two separate studies, one during preschool and one during high school. Findings/Results: We found that Black boys at both stages of development place primacy on care through school-related relationships with teachers, other adults, and peers. The Black boys in this study delineated distinctions in the dimensions of care, source of care, and their perspectives of the care they received from peers and adults in school. Taken together, caring for others and being cared for were critical to the educational experiences and well-being of Black boys in this study. Conclusions/Recommendations: This research contributes to understandings of Black boys’ school-related needs across two distinct developmental periods. As such, it is important for educators to see relational care as a vital tool for educational success of Black boys during the early years and continuously throughout their educational trajectories. Relatedly, educators must seek to incorporate care within the context of a relationship centered on a unique appreciation of each Black boy and his individual care needs, educational aspirations, and possibilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Christine G. Mokher ◽  
Toby J. Park-Gaghan ◽  
Shouping Hu

Background/Context: Accelerated instructional strategies for developmental education have been promoted as a way to help underprepared students to progress more quickly through college-level coursework. Yet, what remains unknown is whether certain accelerated strategies are more effective than others and whether this initial acceleration may lead to longer term success. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: We examine whether the likelihood of success varies for completion of mathematics and English requirements over 3 years among the Florida students enrolled in courses using one of four developmental instructional strategies: compressed, corequisite, modularized, or contextualized. Population/Participants/Subjects: Our sample includes all first-time-in-college students during the 2015–2016 year who enrolled in all 28 public state colleges and took any developmental education course during the first year. Research Design: We use inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) to compare success rates in completion of mathematics and English requirements over 3 years for Florida college students in each of these strategies. Findings/Results: Overall, the results demonstrate variation in the likelihood of success for completion of mathematics and English courses over 3 years among students in different developmental instructional strategies, which suggests that the method of acceleration does matter. Corequisite courses tended to lead to greater long-term gains in math and, to an extent, in reading, while contextualized tended to be most effective in writing. Conclusions/Recommendations: Leaders can play an important role in strengthening institutional capacity to effectively implement developmental education reform by developing faculty buy-in, ensuring adequate resources to scale and sustain reform efforts, and using data to inform future decision-making.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (9) ◽  
pp. 199-222
Author(s):  
Lee Iskander

Background/Context: In recent years, Canadian and U.S. schools have increased efforts to recognize gender diversity and reduce gender-based harassment, in large part because a growing number of young people are coming out as transgender or nonbinary in adolescence. However, little research explores nonbinary teachers’ experiences or investigates barriers to their entry into the profession. Purpose: This article begins to fill this gap by showing how six nonbinary beginning teachers navigated gender expectations, worked to appear professional, and negotiated racial and gendered power dynamics in their initial teacher education and preservice teaching. Participants: Participants include six nonbinary preservice teachers of diverse gender expression and racial and class backgrounds who were enrolled or had recently completed teacher education in North America when the study was conducted in 2018. Research Design: This qualitative study employed in-depth, phenomenological interviews. This article uses Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “willful subject” to consider how participants negotiated the relationship between their gender identities as nonbinary people and their nascent professional identities as teachers. Conclusion: These beginning teachers expressed concern about succeeding in their teacher education programs and worried about how others perceived them because of the expectation of normative gender implicit in teaching’s professional norms. This expectation was enforced by the profession’s gatekeepers more than by K–12 students and their families, who participants generally described as hospitable or indifferent to having a nonbinary teacher. If the profession is to genuinely welcome gender diversity, it must recognize and work to deconstruct its own gender normativity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (8) ◽  
pp. 31-58
Author(s):  
Katherine K. Frankel ◽  
Maneka Deanna Brooks ◽  
Julie E. Learned

Background/Context: In the past two decades there have been at least 10 quantitative reviews, syntheses, or meta-analyses focused on literacy interventions in secondary schools. To date, much of this research has focused on quantifiable outcomes such as reading test scores, and few efforts have been made to synthesize studies of adolescent literacy interventions that attend to how students themselves experience those interventions and what mediates their experiences, which previous adolescent literacy research suggests should be considered alongside other outcomes. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This meta-synthesis of qualitative research highlights additional factors that are overlooked when evidence of effectiveness is defined predominantly through assessment outcomes. It contributes insights from two decades of research on reading intervention classes (RICs), which are a long-standing approach to adolescent literacy intervention. We define RICs as compulsory, yearlong courses that supplement content-area classes with the goal of improving adolescents’ reading. Grounded in sociocultural theories of literacy and learning, our research question was: How do students experience and perceive RICs? Research Design: We conducted a qualitative meta-synthesis of 21 studies published between 2000 and 2020 that (1) focused on secondary (grades 6–12) RICs in the United States and (2) included data related to students’ experiences and perspectives. Data Collection and Analysis: We followed best practices in qualitative meta-synthesis, including assembling an author team composed of researchers with expertise in RICs, identifying a research meta-question, conducting a comprehensive search, selecting and appraising relevant studies, and coding and presenting findings using qualitative techniques. Findings/Results: We found that youth’s own diverse understandings of themselves as readers and writers, combined with the extent to which they viewed their RICs as relevant, agentive, and facilitative of relationships, mediated students’ experiences and perceptions of their RICs. In addition, students across studies described placement policies and practices as confusing, frustrating, and embarrassing. Conclusions/Recommendations: By providing a perspective that extends beyond test scores, the findings highlight some of the consequences of intervention placement policies and practices for adolescents. They also address the need for educational stakeholders to expand definitions of what counts as evidence of effectiveness to inform the future development of re-mediated literacy learning opportunities for adolescents that (1) rethink curriculum and instruction to affirm students’ literacy identities, histories, and capacities, and (2) reposition youth as literacy knowers and doers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (8) ◽  
pp. 59-85
Author(s):  
Derek Taira

Background/Context: Current historical understanding of Hawaiʻi’s territorial period celebrates American education as a crucial influence on the islands’ political development. In particular, the territory’s public school system represents an essential institution for spreading democratic freedom, fostering social mobility, and, more importantly, establishing America’s presence as a positive influence on Hawaiʻi’s political destiny. There has yet, however, to be a critical look at how White territorial school leaders used the public school system as a settler colonial institution with the intent of producing a compliant non-White population accepting of the nation’s racially stratified social, political, and economic systems of inequality. Focus of Study: Making Hawaiʻi American was about controlling the islands’ past and determining its future. Cultivating consent, as this article contends, was a critical strategy to reach this end. White school officials used their uncontestable authority to uproot local history and social systems and replace them with narratives affirming American exceptionalism and racial segregation. Throughout the territorial period (1900–1959), they designed and supported formal and informal schooling practices and policies to inculcate Hawaiʻi’s majority nonwhite students with American values, norms of behavior, and political beliefs to socially engineer acceptance of White American authority and racial hierarchy. Through repetition and enforcement of these practices and policies, they sought to replace the unfavorable local memory of American involvement in the forced 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani and Native protests over U.S. annexation in 1898 with an affirmative, progressive narrative justifying America’s presence and jurisdiction as a beneficent enterprise. Research Design: This article brings historical inquiry to this topic and uses archival materials from the University Archives and Pacific-Hawaiian Collections at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Those include the entire collection of the Hawaii Educational Review, correspondence and memos produced by schoolmen (White male school officials and administrators), and newspaper clippings. It also draws on secondary literature to help further contextualize this topic. Conclusions/Recommendations: The history of White educators in territorial Hawaiʻi reveals how public education under their leadership constituted a colonizing project designed to limit student opportunities and determine their futures. The challenge for scholars and educators is not to consign such histories to mere reflections on past mistakes but to identify how forms of oppressive education continue to manifest in schools today and impact student lives.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document