Using a sample of over 2,000 English language arts teachers, this article analyzes changes in student opportunity to learn across eight years of standards-based reform. Findings indicate significant shifts in cognitive complexity of English language arts instruction over time, with differences based on school and classroom characteristics. Teachers in urban schools and schools serving more historically marginalized children have shifted their instruction to lower levels of cognitive demand relative to other teachers.
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This article examines how a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) endeavored to build its school as an inclusive environment open to students of different sexual orientations. Focusing on the semiotic dimension of spatial production, this article investigates how a conflict over a sign on the GSA’s bulletin board functioned as one front in an ongoing struggle to produce the school’s main hallway as a particular kind of space.
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This graphic medium manuscript presents research from a three-year study of feminist pedagogy in an undergraduate preservice teacher education course. Specifically, this manuscript focuses on two course assignments: an analysis of a post 9/11 audiostory about a Muslim family in New Jersey and a city bus ride around the teacher education students' university town. The co-creators of this manuscript use theories of the body to argue that teacher educators and scholars should tend to the body, and body-in-place, when making sense of and aiming for justice oriented education.
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The continued negative influence of standardized testing as the primary mechanism of accountability authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act is having a disastrous impact on teaching and learning in schools. I suggest focusing teacher preparation work more explicitly on helping prospective teachers understand these impacts so they may be empowered to address them effectively.
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This study addresses the question: How do educators describe their responses to standards-based reform? We draw on interview data from 60 teachers in 32 schools, in 10 districts in 5 states. Our analysis addresses the following key debates that surround standards and accountability policy: 1) the extent to which previously “left behind” students are receiving better instruction, 2) whether teachers and principals feel accountable to student achievement in a way that fosters positive behavior change, 3) how teachers describe “teaching to the test,” and when and if this is good or bad for teachers and students, and 4) the extent to which educators describe standards-based reforms as fostering desirable changes in pedagogy and/or the content of instruction.
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This commentary highlights findings from a study recently completed comparing minority graduation rates of NYC-area Catholic colleges and public universities. The authors argue that the reason why the Catholic colleges are doing better than the CUNY schools is because of a difference in college cultures, and, in particular, an emphasis on career development. Their surveys and interviews provide evidence that the NYC-area Catholic colleges offer a model to schools wishing to improve graduation rates among minority and first-generation populations.
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This paper presents an interpretive policy analysis of a recent reform measure in Hamburg, Germany. The analysis draws on critical appraisals of neoliberal education policy to contextualize the intentions and interpretations of the reform by multiple policy stakeholders.
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This study found that both moral and performance character strengths are important and unique predictors of the academic achievement and conduct of a sample of 500 early adolescents attending several urban charter schools.
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This study used a developmental approach to investigate the relationship between academic and ethnic identities among ethnically diverse college students. The findings indicate that Students of Color perceive a greater connection between their academic and ethnic identities compared to White students, and that this difference can be partially explained by differences in ethnic identity.
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This paper makes an argument for an integral approach for facilitating generative learning by adult learners under conditions of complexity. The focus is on applying adult development theories for enhancing the learner’s capacity for learning how to learn through experience with examples from six years of prototyping this generative learning approach in graduate classes.
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Protecting the Legal Rights of LGBT Students to Attend the Prom
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