The Secreted Curriculum and Youth Education to Become the Professionals the World Craves for

Over the decades, the world has had great people—in economics and education but what the world craves for as it grapples with social challenges are people with strong moral character. This article seeks to provoke discussions on the secreted curriculum and its role on youth’s learning of professionalism because much of youth’s professionalism learning comes not from the prescribed curriculum, but the secreted curriculum. The target population was 1246 undergraduate students in universities in Nairobi city County. The Yamane’s sample calculation formula was employed in determining the sample size and the sample was 486. In analyzing the quantitative data, the researcher utilized the SPSS software program version 25. The results revealed that influences of unplanned lessons arising from how we do what we do and say what we say have both negative and positive impact on youth’s acquisition of professional values. The researcher therefore proposes a thorough exploration of the humanistic climate (the secreted curriculum).

Determining the Influences of a Hidden Curriculum on Students’ Character Development Using the Illuminative Evaluation Model

This study aimed to determine whether the Illuminative Evaluation Model, with its three-stage framework: Investigate, Inquire Further, and Explain, can be used as a methodology in understanding the influences of the hidden curriculum on the character development of preschool students. In Stage 1 Investigate, document analysis, observations, and interviews were conducted to examine the characteristics which were targeted to be developed through the formal curriculum, and the deviations and unintended outcomes that occurred during implementation. In Stage 2 Inquire Further, surveys, structured observations, and focus-group discussions were conducted to progressively focus on selected issues. In Stage 3 Explain, principles and patterns were organized to describe the hidden curriculum. In conclusion, the Illuminative Evaluation Model was found to be effective as a tool in determining the influences of a hidden curriculum on students’ character development. Keywords: curriculum evaluation, Illuminative Evaluation Model, hidden curriculum, qualitative evaluation, character development

Spirituality and Mindfulness Practices of Early Childhood and Elementary Preservice Teachers: A Snapshot

This paper describes the results of a research survey that interpreted the patterns of mindfulness and spirituality within a convenience sample of preservice teachers at a Midwest teacher education institution. Mindfulness and spiritualty represent topics of developing interest in teacher education that serve to increase candidate focus and revision of practice. Respondents completed a survey as part of a semester’s project that interpreted the results of a semester-long mindfulness intervention on student mindfulness and spiritual attitudes and practices. The findings determined that participants had senses of mindfulness and self the emphasized themselves, and their external worlds, let weak connection with a higher spiritual entity. Significant differences were observed between early childhood and elementary majors.

Community Making: An Expansive View of Curriculum

Making as a term has gained attention in the educational field. It signals many different meanings to many different groups, yet is not clearly defined. This project’s researchers refer to making as a term that bears social and cultural impact but with a broader more sociocultural association than definitions that center making in STEM learning. Using the theoretical lenses of critical relationality and embodiment, our research team position curriculum as a set of locally situated activities that are culturally, linguistically, socially, and politically influenced. We argue that curriculum emerges from embodied making experiences in specific interactions with learners and their communities. This study examines multiple ways of learning within and across seven community-based organizations who are engaged directly or indirectly in making activities that embedded literacy, STEM, peace, and the arts. Using online ethnography, the research team adopted a multiple realities perspective that positions curriculum as dynamic, flexible, and evolving based on the needs of a community, its ecosystems, and the wider environment. The research team explored making and curricula through a qualitative analysis of interviews with community organizers and learners. The findings provide thick descriptions of making activities which reconceptualize making and curriculum as living and responsive to community needs. Implications of this study expand and problematize the field’s understanding of making, curriculum, and learning environments.

Digital storytelling as a tool for reflection in virtual reality projects

Reflection is essential for learning and development, especially among middle school students. In this paper, we describe how middle school students can engage in reflective learning by composing digital stories in a project-based learning environment employing virtual reality. Adopting multiple case study methods, we examined the digital stories of five students, together with classroom observations and interviews about their experiences, in order to explore how digital storytelling can allowed students to reflect upon their experiences in a year-end capstone program. Creating digital stories allowed students to 1) reflect on their learning experiences teaching younger students with virtual reality, 2) present their reflections in multiple modalities, and 3) make connections between their present experiences and the past and future. This study demonstrates how digital storytelling can enable multimodal reflection for middle school students, particularly within technology-focused project-based learning environments. Keywords: digital storytelling; project-based learning; reflection; middle school learners

Lessons Learned From a Rural Classroom Study: Transitioning From Concrete to Virtual Manipulatives to Teach Math Fact Fluency to Students With Learning Disabilities

As the use of technology has become more prevalent within the educational environment over the past decade, the emergence of the use of virtual manipulatives to support student learning in math has made transitioning to technology-infused math instruction unavoidable. Students in rural areas, however, have tended to receive far less technology-infused instruction due to the many challenges faced by rural schools that can adversely affect academic opportunities and disrupt equity in learning and teaching. In the current paper, we report on a classroom study conducted to examine whether the previously proven effects of concrete manipulatives can carry over into those of virtual manipulatives when teaching math fact fluency in multiplication and explored the potential for virtual manipulatives in rural classrooms from the teacher’s perspective. Quantitative and qualitative results both indicated a promising potential for usage of virtual manipulatives, with meaningful implications for practitioners. The educational implications for designing and planning effective instruction incorporating virtual manipulatives are discussed.

Towards Abolition: Undoing the Colonized Curriculum

Racial injustice has traditionally been observed from the viewpoint of its impact and outcomes. Subsequently, educators and policy makers have generally focused on outcomes; unequal oppor-tunity structures, disparities in educational achievement, the school-to-prison pipeline, dispropor-tional health indicators, incarceration rates, and harsher punishment in school and judicial sys-tems, are just a few of the contexts by which this nation’s racialized roots can be measured for present day mistreatment and disparate outcomes for minoritized populations. As policy makers and educators look to the impact of racial injustice, a true ontological vantage would reveal the cause as well as the perpetuation of these outcomes. As the current COVID-19 pandemic contin-ues, and with increased interest in online learning, it is vital that teachers and professors seek new pedagogy and tools to teach about racism. Our study examined whether a virtual 1-hour presen-tation on white humanists influences students’ understanding of racial justice. Our research demonstrates that a colonized curriculum impacts student’s outlook on the world and themselves. Inversely, when we expose students to humanists throughout history, we are able to show that white people have a legacy and responsibility to fight for racial justice. This provides students with alternative models – beyond those that perpetuate white supremacy.

Towards Socially Just Literacy Teaching in Virtual Spaces

This study inquires into preservice teachers’ teaching experiences within a virtual tutoring field experience in a literacy methods course. Our work is situated against the greater institutional and social-political context of a competency-based model in education and the Covid-19 pandemic that led to a shift to online instruction. From a social justice lens, we approach the research questions: What are undergraduate preservice teachers’ literacy teaching experiences in a newly-transformed-to-online literacy methods course? In what ways does a virtual tutoring field experience prepare preservice teachers towards socially just literacy teaching? By engaging in Narrative Inquiry, we unraveled preservice teachers’ experiences in facilitating literacy lessons that combine print-based and multimodal instruction, while learning about the specific tensions and questions that they confronted during the process. We realized that preservice teachers’ virtual teaching experiences develop towards more socially just teaching along the areas of knowledge, interpretive frames, teaching strategies, methods, skills, and advocacy and activism. We further found that this approach is a complex process characterized by the personal, contextual, and relational aspects of teaching.

Inclusive Online Teaching and Digital Learning: Lessons Learned in the Time of Pandemic and Beyond

When the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world in 2020 and into 2021, the entire system of education faced the most challenging task to provide education to students using virtual instruction. Within the United States specifically, the pandemic transformed teaching. Teachers were and have continued to be compelled to learn digital technology and integrate varied digital tools into their instruction. As guest editors, Eric and I had the opportunity to reflect on the many instructional challenges and valuable lessons learned about virtual teaching and learning in k-12 and higher education. One of the biggest lessons observed was exposure of huge equity gaps between the tech haves and have nots, regarding access to digital devices and reliable Wi-Fi. It was from this observation that the call for proposals of this special issue was developed. What does inclusion look like in the era of digital and virtual teaching? With this in mind, we were tasked to coedit this special issue of JCSR focusing on the theme “Inclusive Curriculum in the Era of Digital & Virtual Learning.” We had the opportunity to review five exemplary articles responding to the theme.

Sixth-Graders' Paintings for the U.S. Food Conservation Effort: A Qualitative Study

In this article, a research project is discussed that examines the political messages within the paintings commissioned by the U.S. Food Administration to cause civilians during World War I to donate food for the war effort. Sixth grade students in my research project analyzed the paintings commissioned by the U.S. Food Administration and then created their own painting based on arguments in Hoover’s Food in War Speech on why U.S. civilians should donate for the food conservation effort. They also wrote a metacognitive writing piece through a Director’s Cut explaining the political messages in their painting to cause U.S. civilians to donate for the food conservation effort during World War I. I analyzed the sixth grade students’ paintings and Director’s Cuts. The findings from five students’ paintings and Director’s Cuts are provided. Finally, I close the article with a discussion section to examine takeaways from how my research study potentially adds to the body of literature on teaching with visual primary sources that contain political messages.